A deficiencies are responsible for a million lives a year globally and many of those are in developing countries where the main staple is rice. Dr. Ingo Potykus of Switzerland genetically modified rice to accumulate high levels of beta carotene, the natural precursor for vitamin A. Some have argued that it would be unethical to deny this population of such a useful tool to alleviate suffering. This variety is known as ______.

The Golden Rice project, which began in the early 1990’s, was a result of a collaborative effort between the the developers Ingo Potrykus and Peter Byer from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Freiburg, respectively. Golden rice is a variety of rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A, in the edible parts of rice. It is intended to produce a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with a shortage of dietary vitamin A, a deficiency which each year is estimated to kill over 650,000 children under 5 years old and cause an additional half a million cases of irreversible childhood blindness. Golden rice is different from its parental strain because three beta-carotene biosynthesis genes are added.