A team of scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), ETH Zurich, and
Taiwan's National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) have successfully increased
the Vitamin B1 content of rice grains, a significant achievement in the
fight against vitamin B1 deficiency, which is associated with a rice-based
diet.



Rice is a staple food for half the world's population, particularly in the
tropical countries of Asia, South America, and Africa. But rice grains are
low in vitamin B1, and processing such as polishing reduces it even further,
taking 90 percent with them. The research team specifically targeted the
nourishing tissues of the rice grain and succeeded in increasing its vitamin
B1 content, without compromising agronomic yield.



The scientists generated rice lines expressing a gene that sequesters
vitamin B1 in the endosperm tissues. The rice was grown in glasshouses,
harvested, and the grains polished. The research team found that the vitamin
B1 content of rice from these lines increased. The lines were then seeded
in an experimental field in Taiwan and grown for several years. The
characteristics analyzed were plant height, number of stems per plant, grain
weight, and fertility. The NCHU team observed that the level of vitamin B1
in rice grains multiplied by 3 to 4 in the modified lines even after the
polishing stage.



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