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468 on April 28, 2008 Downloaded on April 28, 2008 IT’S EASY TO RECOGNIZE INGO POTRYKUS AT Asian farms within 2 to 3 years, as Potrykus wife serves croissants and strong coffee, he the train station in Basel, Switzerland. Qui- and his colleagues once predicted. In fact, at times comes off as bitter. etly waiting while hurried travelers zip by, he the first field trial of golden rice in Asia There’s more at stake than golden rice is holding, as he promised, the framed and started only this month. Its potential to pre- and personal vindication, he says. In his slightly yellowed cover of the 31 July vent the ravages of vitamin A deficiency has view, 2 decades of fear-mongering by organ- 2000 issue of Time magazine. It features yet to be tested, and even by the most opti- izations such as Greenpeace, his prime www.sciencemag.org Potrykus’s bearded face flanked by some mistic projections, no farmer will plant the nemesis, have created a regulatory climate bright green stalks and a bold headline: “This rice before 2011. so burdensome that only big companies with Rice Could Save A Million Kids A Year.” The delays have made Potrykus, who deep pockets can afford to get any geneti- The story ran at a time when Potrykus, a lives in Magden, a small village in an idyllic cally modified (GM) product approved. As a German plant biotechnologist who has long valley near Basel, a frustrated man. For result, it has become virtually impossible to lived in Switzerland, was on a roll. In 1999, working on what he considers a philan- use the technology in the service of the poor, just as he was about to retire, Potrykus and his thropic project, he has been ridiculed and Potrykus says. Downloaded from colleagues had stunned plant scientists and vilified as an industry shill. Relating the Not everybody is so gloomy. Potrykus’s biotechnology opponents alike by creating a golden rice saga at his dinner table while his co-inventor and main partner, plant bio- rice variety that produced a chemist Peter Beyer of the University group of molecules called of Freiburg in Germany, agrees that pro-vitamin A in its seeds. The it’s been a difficult decade. But a researchers thought this more cheerful character by nature, “golden rice”—named for the Beyer believes rules are just some- yellow hue imparted by the thing to be dealt with; complaining compounds—held a revolu- about them does little, he says. A tionary promise to fight vita- handful of other researchers working min A deficiency, which on GM crops to fight malnutrition blinds or kills thousands of also feel confident that their work children in developing coun- will eventually pay off. tries every year. Many scientists agree with Almost a decade later, Potrykus, however, that GM technol- golden rice is still just that: a ogy has become so controversial that promise. Well-organized for now, there’s little point in harness- opposition and a thicket of regulations on transgenic Fields of gold. The only field studies of crops have prevented the golden rice to date took place in Louisiana plant from appearing on in 2004 and 2005. BOARD GOLDEN RICE HUMANITARIAN IMAGES LIMITED / ALAMY; CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): HORIZON INTERNATIONAL 468 25 APRIL 2008 VOL 320 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS SPECIALSECTION Time flies. The hope expressed in a 2000 Time cover story about Ingo Potrykus remains unfulfilled. advisory board was equally skeptical. Intro- ducing an entire genetic pathway into rice seemed like a stretch. Still, the foundation rolled the dice and supported the project. It took 7 years, but Potrykus and Beyer eventually succeeded in making golden rice by splicing two daffodil genes and a bacter- ial gene into the rice genome. The eureka moment arrived late one night in Freiburg, Beyer recalls. He was analyzing the molecu- lar content of seeds produced in Potrykus’s lab, as he often did, using a technique called high-performance liquid chromatography. This time, peaks showed up on the screen where they had never appeared before—the signals of carotenoids. When Beyer went back to look at the batch of seeds, he noticed something he had missed: The grains had a faint yellow hue. Golden rice had been born. on April 28, 2008 The battle begins Potrykus says he always knew golden rice—a ing it for the world’s poorest. HarvestPlus, a 12 months. Vegetables such as carrots and Thai businessman suggested the catchy vast global program at public research insti- tomatoes, as well as meat, butter, and milk, name—would be controversial. As a professor tutes aimed at creating more nutritious staple can provide the vitamin or its precursors, but in Switzerland, one of the most fiercely anti- crops, is forgoing GM technology almost many families in poor countries don’t have GM countries in Europe, he had been con- entirely and using conventional breeding access to them. A rice variety producing pre- fronted with angry students since the 1980s. instead, despite its built-in limitations. GM cursors to vitamin A in its endosperm, the To protect his plants, ETH spent several mil- www.sciencemag.org products just might end up on the shelf, says main tissue in seeds, might provide a solu- lion dollars on a grenade-proof greenhouse. HarvestPlus Director Howarth Bouis. tion—and it would have yellow kernels. For Beyer, unofficial road signs declaring the Potrykus, now 75 years old, worries that Classical breeding cannot produce such a Upper Rhine Valley a “GM technology-free he may not live to see his invention do any rice, however, because although pro-vitamin region” are a twice-daily reminder that the cli- good. “It’s difficult for me not to get upset A is present in the green parts of the rice mate in Germany isn’t much better. about this situation,” he says. plant, no known strain makes it in its seeds. But golden rice posed a special dilemma to The only option is to tinker with rice’s DNA GM crop opponents, admits Benedikt Haer- Downloaded from A dream takes root to produce the desired effect. Throughout the lin, who coordinated Greenpeace’s European The idea for golden rice was born at an 1980s, the Rockefeller Foundation funded campaign at the time and now works for the international agricultural meeting in the several exploratory studies, but the plan didn’t Foundation on Future Farming. Unlike the Philippines in 1984, says Gary Toenniessen gel until a brainstorming meeting in New existing GM crops that primarily helped farm- of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philan- York City in 1992, at which scientists dis- ers and pesticide companies, it was the first thropy in New York City. It was the early cussed the bold idea of reintroducing the bio- crop designed to help poor consumers in days of genetic engineering, and over beers chemical pathway leading to beta carotene, developing countries. It might save lives. The at a guesthouse one evening, Toenniessen the most important pro-vitamin A, into rice decision whether to oppose it weighed heavily asked a group of plant breeders how the but putting it under control of a promoter on him, Haerlin says, which is why he con- technology of copying and pasting genes that’s specific to endosperm. sulted with WHO experts on vitamin A and might benefit rice. “Yellow endosperm,” Potrykus, then a pioneer in rice transgenics why he traveled to Zürich to spend a day at one of them said. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Potrykus’s lab to talk. Potrykus, impressed by That odd answer alluded to the fact that a (ETH) in Zürich, attended, as did Beyer, who Haerlin’s intelligence, hoped to convince his quarter-billion children have poor diets specialized in carotenoid biochemistry and fellow countryman. SCIENCE lacking in vitamin A. This deficiency can molecular biology. The two met on the plane to He failed. Although Greenpeace pledged damage the retina and cornea and increase New York and hit it off; their fields of expertise not to sabotage field trials, it did launch an susceptibility to measles and other infec- were complementary, and the fact that Zürich aggressive campaign against golden rice. tious diseases. The World Health Organiza- is less than 2 hours from Freiburg was helpful. It argued that the crop was an industry tion (WHO) estimates that between 250,000 They soon had a proposal written up. PR ploy—seed company Syngenta was and 500,000 children go blind every year as Beyer admits he barely believed in the involved in the project, the group pointed CREDIT: MARTIN ENSERINK/ MARTIN CREDIT: a result, and that half of those die within idea himself, and the Rockefeller’s scientific out—designed to win over a skeptical public www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 320 25 APRIL 2008 469 Published by AAAS Plant Genomes quite good,” says Russell, who development, regulation, and marketing— supports the golden rice subjects Potrykus and Beyer admit they project. (A similar study is were clueless about. planned among people with Dubock helped work out a deal in which marginal vitamin A defi- Syngenta could develop golden rice com- ciency in Asia.) mercially, but farmers in developing coun- Haerlin says his calcula- tries who make less than $10,000 a year tions were based on the best could get it for free. He also helped solve data at the time. But even if patent problems with several other compa- they were correct, Potrykus nies. Dubock retired from Syngenta in 2007 says, the first golden rice was but remains involved as a member of the just a proof of principle.
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