Research
Motivated by the upcoming food crisis problem of malnutrition in developing countries and the potential of gene technology to contribute to food security, Potrykus and his research group dedicated their work to genetic engineering projects aimed at improving yield stability and food quality of rice, wheat, millets and manioc crops. The most significant development so far has been the creation of golden rice, a new rice variety providing provitamin A. This strain of rice is widely seen as the model example of how to sustainably reduce malnutrition in developing countries. Potrykus began thinking about using genetic engineering to improve the nutritional qualities of rice in the late 1980s. He knew that of some 3 billion people who depend on rice as their staple crop, around 10% risk some level of vitamin-A deficiency. This problem interested Potrykus for numerous reasons, including the scientific challenge of transferring not just a single gene, but a group of genes that represented a key part of a biochemical pathway. In 1993, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Potrykus teamed up with Peter Beyer and they launched what would become a 7 year, $2.6 million project to develop Golden Rice.
Since his retirement, Ingo Potrykus - as president of the International Humanitarian Golden Rice Board - is devoting his energy to guiding Golden Rice towards subsistence farmers across the many hurdles of a GMO-crop. To this end collaboration he has been established with 14 rice institutions in India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Philippines.
Read more about this topic: Ingo Potrykus
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