CHANDIGARH, FEBRUARY 10: Get set to throw away the iron capsules. Molecular biologists and agricultural scientists are all set to dish up transgenic iron-rich rice on your thali.``Forty per cent of Indian women suffer from iron deficiency'', says V K Vinayak, adviser (energy), department of biotechnology, who was here to participate in a conference on biotechnological strategies in agro-processing.Since the major rice-growing countries of the world are also the ones to report high iron-deficiency, Indian scientists are trying to incorporate a gene that will take care of the imbalance in their one common staple.The path-breaking effort is a by-product of an international `Rice Genome Project' - similar to the Human Genome Project - that aims at mapping the entire rice gene pool.But as scientists say jokingly, designing rice is much more tough than designing clothes. ``India is working with Japan, China, Thailand and other rice-growing countries to map the rice chromosome'', says Vinayak.``A core group of four Indian scientists is currently working on Chromosome 11, the last remaining chromosome. The mapping is expected to be complete in another two years.''Speaking at the conference organised by the All-India Biotech Association and the Punjab State Council for Science and Technology, Vinayak listed the plant, the isolated iron gene and the environment as the three key factors in the development of the iron-rich rice.As V L Chopra of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute put it, ``The plant cannot grow in a test-tube. It has to flourish in the natural environment.'' He said environment would be the major determinant in the development of transgenic rice.If bio-safety is of overriding concern, so is the issue of food scarcity and the availability of a proper choice for consumers. ``In the next 25 times, the world must produce almost 60 per cent more rice to meet the demand'', said R K Singh and S K Datta, scientists at the International Rice Research Institute. ``The supply mustgo up despite less land, less water, less labour and less use of pesticides.''Transgenic rice could well hold the key to the seemingly impossible equation. As of today, scientists are working to increase the biomass of the grain and develop smaller plants that will allow the plant to concentrate on producing more grain. And, of course, on producing tailor-made rice that will take care of deficiencies.Perhaps one day, they will allow a rice farmer to proclaim: We also make steel!
