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Rice News 4th

 sep.2014 

 Asian Farmers, Organizations, Scientists Protest GMGolden Rice 

Rice-producing Asian countries protest against commercializing of GMO rice

© Fotolia/ mamamiapl 15:39 03/09/2014

Tags: GMO, farmers, rice, Asia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia 

MOSCOW, September 3 (RIA Novosti) - Farmers, sectoral organizations and scientists fromrice-producing Asian countries are protesting further field testing and attempts tocommercialize Golden Rice, a genetically modified variety of rice, Health Impact Newsreported.“We want to protect our rights against the contamination of our rice varieties, thehealth of our people and the environment. It is the plan of IRRI [International RiceResearch Institute] to contaminate our rice with the privately owned Golden Rice, makingus subservient to the interests of huge corporations. The truths are, there are lots existingsolutions to fight Vitamin A deficiency,” spokesman Bert Autor of SIKWAL-GMO, an

alliance of farmers and organizations against GMOs in Bicol, the Philippines, was quoted assaying by Health Impact News.“There are food sources rich in Vitamin A and are readilyavailable. Also why not focus on giving land to the landless farmers? A lot of farmers cannotparticipate in increasing food security of the country as most of them do not own the landthey till. We do not need Golden Rice, it is but a distraction to attaining food security andagricultural development,” Autor added.Farmers across Asia argue genetically modified rice

 varieties such as Golden Rice not only threaten public health, but also contaminate local rice varieties with unknown ecological effects, Health Impact News reported. Protesters claimthe project is a ploy to allow transnational agribusinesses to increase control over food

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production and agriculture.Golden Rice is transgenic rice containing beta carotene, analleged solution to Vitamin A deficiency (VAD), revived in the mid-2000s by a $2 billioninvestment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project has already completedfield trials in the Philippines and is awaiting the collation of data for regulatory approval.

 After approval, feed testing on humans will commence.Both the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine Rice ResearchInstitute (PhilRice) of the Department of Agriculture are proponents of the project thatplans to commercialize Golden Rice by 2016. In addition to the Philippines, Golden Rice is

 being field tested in Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Sandip Roy: Rice Bucket ChallengeBy Sandip Roy 

 

Shiva Shankar from Hyderabad gets his niece Vaishnavi from Pune to donate rice to a woman who works there

Rice Bucket Challenge Facebook page

Dispatch from Kolkata for Sept. 3, 2014

Journalist Manju Latha Kalanidhi in the city of Hyderabad. Says the ice bucket challenge left her cold.

Kalanidhi, who works for a rice research website decided instead of aping the Ice Bucket challenge, she

could do something a little more Indian and a little less wasteful.

She came up with the Rice Bucket challenge. Take some rice. Give it to a needy person. And challenge

your friends to do the same.

Sandip Roy investigates the latest social ,media challenge and finds out what all this 'Rice' is about.

Tags: ice bucket challenge,ice bucket, rice bucket, rice bucket challenge,Manju Latha Kalanidhi

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For a second rice revolution

Better seeds and cultivation methods can be a game-changer 

R Gopalakrishnan

September 4, 2014 Last Updated at 21:48 IST

he last few columns on innovation covered diverse aspects and examples of innovation. The one onpublic sanitation demonstrated the endless nature of innovation ("'Neat and clean' innovation", April18), the drama of gas fracking showed how known ideas can coalesce to yield a new idea ("Time,patience & innovation", May 16), the emergence of e-mail showed how many are involved inbuilding the innovation "cathedral", so many that it is unclear who built the cathedral ("The 'I' factorin innovation", June 13), and the connection between foreign direct investment and innovation showed

how ideas flow across borders without visas and passports ("Innovation across borders", August 8). As several readers commented, innovation even in very old subjects goes on and on like a spaghetti.This is absolutely true as shown by the example this month of rice.Rice is the highestproduced cereal consumed by human beings. About half of the global population derives its core

calorie intake from rice. In Africa, where one in three people depends on rice, the demand for rice is

growing at 20 per cent per annum. Rice is a deeply emotional subject all over Asia. Much rice growsin the rich valleys of the Himalayan river systems such as the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy andMekong. In India, rice connotes religious and spiritual attributes, for example, anna daata  and anna

praasanam . Even Honda and Toyota, which are car brand names mean rice fields in Japanese.Imagine an Indian car with the brand name Chawal. Asia grows 90 per cent of the world's rice andthe per capita consumption of rice is flat. This means that as the productivity of growing riceimproves, the Asian population also increases by the same amount. Rice also consumes adisproportionate amount of water, which is becoming scarce all over the world. So, the world facesa twin challenge with rice: need for higher productivity but using less water.A revolution in riceproduction can occur by producing better seeds or through better cultivation methods. The

combination can deliver fantastic results. For sure, the world is seeking a second ricerevolution.Seeds: In the 1960s, a revolution in seeds occurred through high yielding varieties,

followed by hybrid seeds. Traditional rice is a tall plant with a small grain and lots of body. In strongbreeze, the plant sways and loses the grain. To solve the problem, either the root system could bestrengthened or the plant could be made short and stocky. The discovery of a "short rice" variety inthe fields of Taiwan helped produce dwarf rice on a big scale.In the journey for better seeds,genetic modification arrived as a technique. Rice is the first cereal whose genome sequence hasbeen cracked by science. Genome is a bit like the book of life. This book is in a language that hasonly four letters, A, G, C and T. "Codons" are formed by a combination of three of these four letters,each codon determining the building block of proteins. In rice, the genome consists of over 20,000genes, which means that the code is now known for proteins that are involved in determining allaspects of growth and development. If a scientist wishes to make a drought-resistant rice, he or sheknows which paragraph has to be modified or re-written. Likewise, with flood-resistant and salt-resistant rice.In 2000, Science magazine published a paper about "Golden Rice", a genetically

modified rice with beta-carotene (Vitamin A) in the polished grain. With subsequent developments, itis possible to increase up to 23 times the level of this desirable beta carotene; golden rice is now avery potent tool to address the Vitamin A deficiency problem plaguing many parts of the world.

System: Apart from developing new rice varieties and hybrids, the system of growing rice has alsoattracted innovation. For centuries, the farmer was not too concerned about water or labourintensity. He would plant the seedlings in a nursery. After a few weeks, when the plant is prone toweed attack, he would flood the nursery with water. After the plant's delicate phase concludes, it isreplanted into the normal field and tended for the next several weeks. This process has been

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