Gene rice on its way in China

Genetically modified rice cleared for commercial sale could be growing on Chinese farms as early as next year, making China the first country to allow commercial cultivation of GM strains. The field trials required for any new variety are now under way, following official safety clearance November.

Two varieties, called Huahui 1 and Bt Shanyou 63, received clearance and should be launched within the next two years. Both contain "Bt" proteins from the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium to protect them against the rice stem borer, the most serious rice pest in China.

"I expect that large-scale production of these two insect-resistant rices will occur in 2011 in Hubei province, one of the major rice production regions in China," says Jikun Huang, director of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

If all goes well in Hubei, Huang expects rapid commercial approval elsewhere in China. He brushes aside the idea that the GM varieties may damage trade by contaminating exports, pointing out that exports account for less than 1 per cent of the country's total rice production.

Previous experimental field trials of GM rice varieties in China, including the two now poised for commercialisation, showed that they benefited poor farmers and decreased their exposure to harmful pesticides.

Bob Zeigler, director of the non-profit International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines, is optimistic about the future of GM rice, saying that GM technology can deliver unique traits that are otherwise unobtainable. This year, farmers in India and the Philippines have begun receiving a flood-tolerant rice developed at the IRRI which is non-GM but was developed using knowledge from GM studies.