Golden rice: An ally in beating malnutrition
By Henrylito D. Tacio
(Photos courtesy of IRRI)
The malnutrition problem which the Philippines is facing today can be addressed partly by allowing Filipino farmers to plant Golden Rice and eat the nutrition-enriched rice, according to an international agricultural research and training organization dedicated to abolishing poverty and hunger among people and populations that depend on rice-based agri-food systems.
“Golden Rice presents a unique opportunity for meeting the nutritional needs of these populations, in combination with other existing interventions,” says the Laguna-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). “Golden Rice and other rice biofortification initiatives can serve as a complementary pathway to improved nutritional status.”
(Photos courtesy of IRRI)
Nutrition is defined as the process of providing or obtaining the food necessary for health and growth. Malnutrition is an imbalance between the nutrients your body needs to function and the nutrients it gets. It can mean undernutrition or overnutrition. In the Philippines, undernutrition is and has always been a serious problem.
Consider these startling statistics, culled from various sources:
· One in three children (29%) younger than five years old suffered from stunting, being small in size for their age. This is equivalent to an estimated 3.4 million stunted children
· For nearly thirty years, there have been almost no improvements in the prevalence of undernutrition in the country.
· The Philippines is ranked fifth among countries in the East Asia and Pacific region with the highest prevalence of stunting and is among the 10 countries in the world with the highest number of stunted children.
· About 693,501 Filipino children under five years old are wasted while another 2,271,815 under five years old are underweight.
· Some three million Filipino families experience hunger. Another 14.3 million households experience food insecurity or the limited or uncertain access to nutritious food.
(Photos courtesy of IRRI)
“Malnutrition is a serious violation of a child’s right to adequate nutrition and can have serious long-term consequences for a child’s health, development, and well-being. Children need a varied and nutritious diet for their growth and development, and caregivers need support to provide their children with a healthy diet,” deplored Dr. Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov, the Philippines representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Health experts claim undernourished children are more likely to face death in their early years, and if they survive, they are likely to perform poorly in school, which will affect their future as adults, including the jobs that they will get.
In the Philippines, the impact of malnutrition on education among children is significantly evident. The country’s basic educational system is, in fact, ranked among the lowest performing globally.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) – which measures the reading, mathematics, and science literacy of 15-year-old students – ranked the Philippines lowest in reading and second lowest in math and science in 2018.
A report from the World Bank showed the Philippines having severe learning poverty: less than one out of 10 grade 3 pupils can read and understand what they are reading. Among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Filipinos ranked 10th in terms of IQ level. The average IQ of Filipinos is 86.
When it comes to height, Filipinos are the second shortest in the ASEAN region. Worldwide, the Philippines ranks 9th in the global burden of stunting and 10th in the global burden of wasting.
Malnutrition is not only a health problem or a current issue but also an economic problem whose effects can be felt for generations to come.
In the report, “Cost of hunger: Philippines The Economic Impact of Child Undernutrition on Education and Productivity in the Philippines,” it was stated that the combined cost of education and productivity losses associated with childhood undernutrition in the year 2013 was approximately P328 billion, which is equivalent to 2.84% of the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP).
(Photos courtesy of IRRI)
In 2015, the burden on the country’s economy brought by childhood undernutrition was estimated at US$4.4 billion, 1.5% of the country’s GDP.
Based on the country’s Human Capital Index (HCI) of 0.52, it means that the future productivity of a Filipino child born today will be half of what could have been achieved with complete education and full health.
Is there a solution in sight? Some health experts believe the solution lies with the food being consumed by children. Rice, the dominant cereal and staple food of Filipinos, could play a significant role in that. Even a small increase in the nutrient content of rice grains, they claim, could have a significant impact on the health and the quality of life of Filipinos.
Take the case of vitamin A, an essential micronutrient. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is primarily caused by diets chronically inadequate of vitamin A. Globally, VAD remains a major public health problem, with women and children being the most vulnerable.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) reported that VAD afflicts 250 million people around the world, most of which are preschool children (190 million) and pregnant women (19 million).
VAD is the primary contributor to preventable blindness in children and heightens the likelihood of disease and mortality due to severe infections. In addition, VAD raises the risk of respiratory infections and diarrhea in children experiencing mild to moderate deficiency. VAD also affects the mobilization of stored iron and elevates the risk of maternal mortality.
In the Philippines, a 2016 UNICEF study on the Economic Burden of Malnutrition reported 1,840 childhood deaths per year due to VAD. In its 2019 Expanded National Nutrition Survey, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) reports that VAD affects 15.5% of children aged 6 months to 5 years.
Eating fruits and vegetables can provide the necessary nutrients. But WHO reported that the per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables in the country has declined over the years and it is less than the 400-grams per day recommendation of the WHO.
The closest possible for these children to have vitamin A is to have it present in the rice they are eating. This is where Golden Rice – locally known as Malusog Rice – comes in. Golden Rice contains beta carotene, which is a rich source of Vitamin A.
Golden Rice is a product of genetic engineering. It has been deemed “as safe as conventional rice” following a biosafety evaluation carried out by the Bureau of Plant Industry within the Department of Agriculture. Consequently, Golden Rice has received approval for use as food for human consumption, animal feed, or for processing purposes.
According to IRRI, Golden Rice was developed as a complementary approach to reducing vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in at-risk populations. “The long-term strategy is to anchor and align Golden Rice with national programs for agriculture and nutrition and develop an economically sustainable distribution system for its seeds and grains for optimal access of farmers and consumers,” it says.
Golden Rice was conceived by Professor Ingo Potrykus, formerly associated with the Institute for Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Professor Peter Beyer from the University of Freiburg in Germany.
The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) says the development of this rice variety employed genetic engineering techniques, a contemporary biotechnological approach that facilitates the transfer of specific traits between organisms by incorporating the gene responsible for the desired characteristic.
The innovative method was necessitated by the inability of global surveys of rice varieties to identify any that naturally contained beta carotene, rendering traditional breeding methods ineffective for the creation of Golden Rice.
PhilRice says the Golden Rice was originally created by incorporating genes from a daffodil and a common soil bacterium. Later on, an improved variant of Golden Rice was produced by utilizing a gene from corn. This enhanced version contains twenty times the amount of beta carotene compared to its predecessor.
(Photos courtesy of IRRI)
Now, here’s good news. High zinc and high iron will soon be added to Golden Rice. “The research is already done,” IRRI says. “The dossier to deregulate zinc and iron events is ready for submission. Crosses into high-yielding backgrounds are already advanced in confined field trials.”
That makes Malusog Rice as “three-in-one” rice. It will be sold for the same price as regular white rice, according to Dr. Howarth E. Bouis, an American economist whose work has focused on agriculture, nutrition outcomes, and reducing micronutrient malnutrition, also known as hidden hunger.
Dr. Bouis established and previously directed HarvestPlus, a global non-profit initiative dedicated to agricultural research. In 2016, Bouis received the World Food Prize in acknowledgment of his groundbreaking efforts in the field of biofortification.
Mothers belonging to low-income groups who buy and serve their families ‘three-in-one’ Malusog Rice, replacing regular white rice on a one-for-one basis without incurring additional expenses to the family food budget.
According to Dr. Bouis, doing so will double the family’s vitamin A consumption, more than double their family’s zinc consumption, and increase their family’s iron intake by 25%.
“This powerful new technology, available to all but particularly beneficial for the poor, demonstrates the Philippine government’s long-term commitment and investment in assisting the less fortunate Filipinos to improve their health and cognition,” Dr. Bouis urged.
“It would be an unspeakable travesty not to allow the commercial development of this new technology,” he added.
IRRI agrees. “Undernutrition robs Filipino children of their chance for a bright future,” it says. “It would be an unspeakable travesty not to allow the commercial development of this new technology.”
