- guardian.co.uk, Saturday January 27 2001 00.54 GMT
The entire genetic code for the crop that feeds half the planet - rice - has been unravelled by the European agribusiness giant Syngenta and an American firm that patented two breast cancer genes, it was announced yesterday.
They finished the project two years ahead of a publicly-funded consortium of scientists in Japan, China, Korea, Europe and the US.
Rice is the first crop plant, and only the second plant of any kind, to be sequenced. This means that scientists now have the grain's entire 430m-letter DNA code to an accuracy of 99.5%. In that code could be up to 50,000 genes which will almost certainly hold the secrets of higher yields, better pest-resistance and richer nourishment for the 3bn for whom rice is a staple of survival. The researchers promised seeds with new properties in about five years.
The announcement triggered alarm from Action Aid, the hunger charity, which pointed out that there were already 229 patents on rice and that the diet of some of the world's poorest people should not become the preserve of big business. Nor should companies patent genes or DNA. Syngenta has its headquarters in Basle, Switzerland. It entered a $33m [£20m] deal with Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, Utah, to race through the genome of rice ahead of the international rice genome sequencing project led by Japan. Myriad Genetics triggered uproar among genetic researchers and cancer charities in the 1990s when it claimed patents on two genes linked with breast cancer, and developed diagnostic tests.
Genetic scientists have so far decoded the genomes of yeast, viruses, bacteria, a fruit fly, a nematode worm, a human being and a small weed related to the mustard family. An intimate understanding of how rice grows, flowers, sets seed and ripens will be of incalculable importance both to commercial growers and to subsistence farmers everywhere.
But what began as international co-operation to understand more about life's machinery turned into a series of races as big corporations began to scent huge profits in the "intellectual property" behind biotechnology. The international researchers began co-operating seven years ago. Syngenta and Myriad joined forces and finished the job in a year and a half, relying on new techniques, state-of-the-art computer power and the spur of huge potential rewards.
Syngenta said yesterday that it would sell data on the rice genome to seed businesses and other commercial groups, and make the information available to scientists "through research contracts". It also said it would provide information "without royalties or technology fees" to scientists helping subsistence farmers. Rice is grown in 100 countries but nine tenths of the world's crop is produced in Asia.
The two companies said that they would not attempt to patent the rice genome but they could patent particular uses of genes as they were identified.
"Understanding cereal genetic structure and associated proteins will enable plant breeders to produce crops that are more nutritious, more productive and easier to process," said David Evans, head of research at Syngenta. "We will also research new ways to protect crops from diseases or pests and discover new uses for crop plants..."
Humans have been growing rice for 5,000 years. A member of the grass family, it provides four-fifths of south-east Asia's calories, and research groups everywhere are working on ways of stepping up the crop's protein and vitamin content. One Swiss team, working with a US foundation, recently announced a genetically-modified strain enriched with vitamin A, which could reduce blindness among children in the developing world. New varieties developed in the so-called "green revolution" of the last 30 years have doubled world production. But demand is expected to increase by 70% over the next 30 years, as the population of the planet soars to 8bn or more.
