Conventional wisdom tells you to go where the nutrition is. This is why you have been told to eat specific foods to get specific nutrients: milk for calcium, soya and meat for proteins, leafy vegetables for iron and so on. Now scientists are trying to make nutrition come to you. It is possible to eat your favourite foods, they say, and still get most of the nutrition you need for good health. And recently, they added one more item to the growing list of such foods: rice.

Rice is the staple of half the world’s population. While it is not labelled a junk food, it is not considered one of the most nutritious foods either. Those who eat rice regularly must depend on other foods for their daily supply of protein, iron, vitamins and minerals. However, a large section of these people may not be able to afford other exotic foodstuff to supplement their basic diet. But now there is hope for the rice eaters of the world.

A few years ago, some Swedish scientists came up with rice that is rich in vitamin A precursors. This “golden rice” had its fair share of controversies but is known to be capable of providing vital vitamin A to hundreds of millions of poor people. Later, scientists developed rice that is richer in iron, and that too has been found to be helpful. Now American and Indian researchers have developed rice that has at least twice as much protein as normal rice.

Hari Krishnan of the University of Missouri, US, and P. Sukumar of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Coimbatore, crossed a normal cultivable variety of rice, Oryza sativa, with a wild one, Oryza nivara, to produce another variety that is superior to both. While such achievements are commonplace in plant breeding, the particular variety that these scientists developed was not. The rice not only cooks well but also has a protein content of 7-15 per cent. Normal rice, on the other hand, has a protein content of only around 7-9 per cent. Says Krishnan: “The average protein content of this rice is 12.5 per cent, but it can go up to as high as 15 per cent.” The findings are reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Rice is one of the most widely researched crops. It is thus also one of the most well understood of crops. The rice genome was the first among those of plants to be fully sequenced. This knowledge is now bearing fruit in many ways. As we understand the genetic make up of rice, we also learn how to manipulate it to our advantage. As we learn more about rice, we also learn about other crops. As we learn to produce “super rice”, we will also learn to produce super wheat, super corn, super vegetables, super fruits and so on. In practice it is not quite as straightforward as that, but rice research does open doors to learning about other crops.

Golden rice was one of the first attempts at producing rice with increased nutrition. It was the result of mixing two lines of expertise: the ability to genetically engineer and regenerate crops like rice, and the ability to engineer the carotenoid pathway — that ultimately results in the production of vitamin A — to the rice grain. The technologies were developed by the end of the 1990s and field trials began in the year 2004. The rice is still under field trials. Although it is not without its share of controversies, experts say that around 150 gm of this rice is enough to provide the recommended daily requirements of vitamin A.

As this rice variety was being developed, scientists around the world — particularly in the International Rice Research Institute in Manila — started developing rice rich in iron and zinc. Many people in the world lack enough iron in their diets. And this concerns a whopping 3.5 billion people in the developing and poor countries. Rice that has four times more iron than the normal variety has already been developed. In a study that looked for the first time at how specially bred crops help people, researchers at Cornell University in the US found that iron-rich rice helps increase the iron content in the body of women by 20 per cent.

While both vitamin A and iron are important micro nutrients, protein is a completely different matter. We need to consume 60-70 grams of protein every day to remain healthy. This is a tall order if you do not eat protein-rich foods like meat, fish or soya. Cereals are relatively poor in protein, in terms of quantity. However, quality is a different matter. “Rice has a good mix of essential amino acids,” says Hari Krishnan. Krishnan worked with Sukumar in developing the new protein-rich rice.

This rice combines high protein content with good cooking qualities, along with the disease-resistant properties of wild rice. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University researchers led by Sukumar, who is Krishnan’s Indian collaborator, will now use this variety for multi-centric field trials lasting a few years. However, the value of this product is in providing material for further research, to provide rice with an even higher protein content and other qualities. It is now clear that breeding normally cultivated varieties with wild rice can result in varieties superior to both.