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Comment by technotony | Hacker News Reader

Golden Rice is an excellent case study for one solution to this problem. If the public were more accepting of GMO's we could take the existing best crop lines (bred for looks and supply chain) and insert additional nutrients. My companies technology (www.taxa.com) could easily do this if the regulatory and public acceptance issues weren't so big that we are focusing on non-food applications (glowing plants, blue roses etc).

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How reliable/discrete is this process? Can I select particular nutrients and decide I want a plant to have them? Can you tell us more/provide some interesting references?

We can put new pathways into plants. Currently our tech allows up to ten genes. Most nutrients could be boosted with 1-2 additional genes (typically over expressing genes the plant already has or adding similar genes from other plants, eg Golden Rice add's beta carotene genes from daffodil), so today we could boost 4-6 nutrients. Over time we'll be able to add more and it will get easier (Eg through synthetic chromosomes). This explanation of how they made golden rice is probably helpful: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how1_sci.php

It's not as simple as just putting the first genes into the plant, there is an optimization process needed. The regulatory costs however are at least 10-20 times greater than the development costs.

Do you know any rice cultivars, to which Golden Rice genes have been added without a decrease in yields in regions where Vit. A deficiency is currently a problem (e.g. the Philippines)?

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