The Philippines will be the first to grow “Golden Rice,” the only rice variety to be fortified with Vitamin A to prop up the immune system and combat blindness, particularly among children.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) affects 40 percent of Filipino children aged between six months and five-years old, according to the 2003 National Nutrition Survey (NNS) conducted by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI).

Worse, between one and five lactating mothers also suffer from VAD, which translates into a bigger problem for their infants.

A total of 90 million children in Southeast Asia suffer from VAD, the highest number in the world.

What compounds the problem is that traditional rice varieties do not have Vitamin A.

VAD places sufferers at risk of infections, and many of them are condemned to suffer from night blindness.

"Vitamin A deficiency can be reduced by eating more food that are naturally high in vitamin A or beta-carotene (a form of vitamin A found in plants), by eating fortified processed foods that have had these micronutrients added to them and by taking vitamin A supplements," health officials said.

VAD is severe in areas where nutritious food is scarce, not available or simply just too expensive for poor people.

To counteract he problem, researchers ventured into fortifying rice with Vitamin A, with the first variety developed, Golden Rice, getting the nod of government for testing and possible commercialization in five years.

"Golden Rice is a new kind of rice that is being developed to fight vitamin A deficiency. Its grain contains beneficial amounts of beta-carotene, which is a nutrient found in many fruits and vegetables such as papaya and carrots, gives Golden Rice its orange-yellow color, and; is used by the human body to make vitamin A," proponents said.

The impetus for the development of Golden Rice came from Prof. Ingo Potrykus, then of the Institute for Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Dr. Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg in Germany.

They nurtured the theory that to combat VAD, rice grains can be coaxed into producing beta-carotene.

By 1999, they achieved proof of concept that this could be done, and dubbed the new rice “Golden Rice.”

Potrykus and Beyer thought of using the scientific invention to benefit resource-poor farmers, with no charge for the technology, if they engage in propagatying Golden Rice.

From 2000 to 2005, they worked in developing the product and scientists at Syngenta, a Swiss company, also carried out additional laboratory, greenhouse and field research to help raise the beta-carotene levels in Golden Rice.

In 2005, the scientists developed new Golden Rice lines that produced 23 times more beta-carotene than what the prototype Golden Rice generated in 1999.

The latest lines of Golden Rice were developed using a combination of genetic modification and breeding methods. They contain genes from corn and other sources that together produce beta-carotene.

Currently, the researchers working on Golden Rice are focused on three areas: Establishing its nutritional benefits; breeding Golden Rice varieties that are well-suited for different rice-growing environments in Asia, and; undertaking regulatory studies to evaluate the safety of the variety.

The Philippine Rice Research Institute is also working on using the advances in Golden Rice to generate beta-carotene in local rice variety PSB Rc82.