RSB Director's Seminar: From idea to impact – the long journey of Golden Rice to address micronutrient deficiency in vulnerable populations

ABSTRACT

Golden Rice and its co-inventors, (Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer) were featured on the cover of Time Magazine in the year 2000 for their landmark proof of concept for using genetic engineering to address vitamin A deficiency in developing nations. The seminar will outline the process of bringing Golden Rice through the long and tortuous pathway of development and regulatory approval, to the point of initial deployment in the Philippines in 2022 (with market and consumer testing data showing a very positive response), to the court case which completely shut us down mid-2024, and finally to the current hiatus as we await a decision to our appeal to the full bench of the Philippines Supreme Court.

Throughout this long process the science was the most straightforward part! The seminar will traverse the various types/categories of social license needed to traverse the regulatory system; the social license we generated as we moved into deployment (which was strong and supportive); and how our opponents acted as gatekeepers of our legal/regulatory license - essentially overriding the social license granted by regulators and by those on whom our work is focused, through the legal system.

The final decade of my career is testament to the fact that while good science and a compelling case for the work is a necessary foundation; there are multiple layers of social license required for long term success in bringing an innovation to market and having impact.

As we await a ruling, we maintain readiness to resume deployment in the Philippines, continue to progress approval for Golden Rice in Indonesia and Bangladesh, and continue building the foundation for 3-in-1 Healthier Rice, which is Golden Rice coupled with high iron and zinc for broader impact.

BIOGRAPHY

Russell is a rice breeder with experience developing varieties for the NSW Rice Industry in the Riverina region of south-west NSW and northern Victoria, for the first 28 years of his career. He has a particular interest in developing highly productive varieties while matching grain quality to market requirements.

From 2012 Russell spent three years as IRRI's representative in South Korea, conducting breeding related research focused on developing varieties suitable for temperate rice production environments, specifically to discover and characterize new genes and QTLs for agronomic traits, grain quality, disease and insect resistance, and cold tolerance in japonica and indica backgrounds. During this time, he also coordinated the activities of the Temperate Rice Research Consortium.

From 2014 he became Program Leader for Improving the Nutritional Quality of Rice through rice biofortification, at IRRI headquarters in the Philippines. Responsibilities included leading a conventional breeding program for high zinc rice varieties, and leading for the Healthier Rice Program, aimed at gaining regulatory approval and deploying Golden Rice, genetically modified to produce beta-carotene in the grains, and adding additional transformations to increase iron and zinc in the grains.