{"id":2938,"date":"2011-09-12T10:29:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T00:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=2938"},"modified":"2012-03-21T09:32:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T22:32:17","slug":"rice-meets-daily-iron-requirements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/science\/rice-meets-daily-iron-requirements\/","title":{"rendered":"Rice meets daily iron requirements"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/p>\n

White rice (the polished grains) contain low concentrations of iron and zinc. Image: Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A new strain of iron-rich rice could bring hope to billions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scientists from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics<\/a> (ACPFG) have produced a new strain rice with increased levels of iron and zinc. The rice has been genetically modified to increase the amount of iron transported to the endosperm of the grain.<\/p>\n

The new strain contains up to four times more iron than conventional strains, while the levels of zinc have doubled. “Rice is the primary food source for half the planet,”\u009d said ACPFG program leader Alex Johnson, lead author of the research published in PLoS ONE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“If children do not have iron throughout their development, you can have greatly impaired mental development.”\u009d<\/p>\n

Former conventional breeding programs had aimed to increase the levels of iron in rice to 14 parts per million (ppm). “(Conventional breeding) had failed to reach that target by a long shot. The best they could get to was six ppm.”\u009d<\/p>\n

Dr Johnson focused on the nicotianamines, a group of genes which regulate the amount of iron taken up the plants. The genes are usually turned “\u02dcon’ and “\u02dcoff’ according to the amount of iron required by the plant at a given time.<\/p>\n

By permanently switching these genes “\u02dcon’, the rice plants continually take up iron from the soil. The researchers then used the Australian Synchotron<\/a> in Melbourne to determine where the additional iron was being stored within the grain.<\/p>\n

Dr Johnson said that if the iron had been contained on the outside of the grain, it would have been milled off when the grains were polished to produce white rice. “There was quite a bit of it that had penetrated into the grain.”\u009d<\/p>\n

The next stage of the research will be field trials to determine whether the plants will be stable in different environments and seasons. The researchers will also initiate animal trials to assess the effectiveness of the grain.<\/p>\n

Dr Johnson said once the high iron rice strain is deemed to be safe and stable, it will be crossed with other strains around the world. The researchers will focus on countries such as India and Bangladesh, where 70 per cent of the daily energy intake comes from rice.<\/p>\n

According to the World Health Organisation, over two billion people around the world currently suffer from iron deficiencies. “If we get the rice there, we know that’s what they’re really eating,”\u009d Dr Johnson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new strain of iron-rich rice could bring hope to billions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-health","category-science"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2938"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4265,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions\/4265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}