Scientists marked a milestone on the road to feeding more of the world's hungry on Thursday with the publication of research on the rice genome that could lead to a strain yielding more plentiful harvests.

The summary of the consensus sequence of the rice genome, which brings together about five years of work from scientists in 10 different countries, appeared in Thursday’s issue of the science journal Nature.

“Much as the Human Genome Project has revolutionized biology, the rice genome promises to inspire new cereal crop research,” said Claire Fraser, president of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), a nonprofit research institute based in Rockville, Maryland, which took part in the research. “This is a major step forward for agriculture.”

Critical Importance

The rice genome is critically important for two reasons. First, rice is the most consumed staple food grain in the world, harvested on about 10 percent of the world’s arable land.

Nearly half of the 23 countries that produce more than 1.1 million tons of rice annually have a per capita annual income of less than $500. Therefore new varieties of rice could improve the lives of many poor people around the world.

Second, the rice genome provides a good working guide to the genomes of other major cereal crops. Similar genes present in species of maize, wheat, barley, rye, sorghum, and sugarcane are thought to be likely to occur in approximately the same locations as their counterparts in rice.

“Rice is the Rosetta Stone for crop genomes,” said Robin Buell, lead investigator for TIGR’s portion of the project. “We can use the rice genome as a base for genomic studies of cereals.”

Rice is considered a better candidate for sequencing because its genome is significantly smaller than those of maize and wheat. Ironically, its 37,544 genes may prove to be more than can be found in the human genome.

Monsanto Backing

The new paper is an update on a first draft finished in April 2000 by researchers, led by Dr. Leroy Hood at the University of Washington in Seattle. This earlier project was funded by agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto and Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta.

“We made available 430 million base pairs of rice genome and then they had to fill in the gaps and produce a more complete version,” said Colin Merritt, Monsanto U.K.’s new business development manager.

“In one sense [the sequence is] just one step along the road because it doesn’t tell you the function of all the genes, but it’s a major step forward to producing new varieties in a more planned way, be it by selective breeding or genetic engineering,” he added.

Developing higher-yield varieties will become an increasingly necessary task. Over the next 20 years, world rice production must increase by a projected 30 percent to feed the Earth’s growing population.

The International Rice Research Institute estimates that Asia will gain a billion new rice consumers by 2020, when more than half the world’s population will depend on the plant.

Genetically Modified Controversy

The figures indicate that developing countries are embracing genetically modified (GM) crops. According to Ernst & Young, biotech crops are now cultivated in 18 countries, with R&D efforts under way in another 45.

“Developing countries are adopting agricultural biotech at a much faster rate [than industrialized nations],” said Ernst & Young’s Global Biotechnology Report 2005: Beyond Borders. “2004 also marked the first year that the absolute growth was higher in developing countries (7.2 million hectares) than in industrial countries (6.1 million hectares).”

However, many anti-GM groups argue that developing countries have limited choice on whether to legalize genetically modified crops. In March, the Brazilian government endorsed a plan to legalize GM crops following an acknowledgement of the country’s sizeable black market in GM seeds (see Biotech in Brazil). This prompted biotech giant Monsanto to invest $20 million in the country.

China is currently considering allowing genetically modified rice to be grown in the country. The idea “could be agricultural biotech’s most significant breakthrough yet,” according to Ernst & Young, and is largely driven by the country’s desire to increase crop yields and become self-sufficient in food.

Although not yet legal, British NGO Greenpeace has reported that genetically modified rice and rice seeds are already on sale in markets in the central Chinese province of Hubei. Greenpeace estimates that 950 to 1,200 tons of GM rice were grown in China last year.