Syngenta has no commercial interests in Golden Rice. Why then is it supporting the development work?
Syngenta has no commercial interest in Golden Rice in respect of its potential use or application in developing countries. It does not see a commercial market for Golden Rice in the developed world either. The technology is being donated by the inventors and Syngenta to the resource-poor farmers of developing countries. Syngenta is donating selected transgenic Golden Rice events to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board and their development will be the responsibility of the Board and public institutes, which are the licensees. The intention is to introduce Golden Rice into publicly-owned rice varieties via national and international public sector research institutions, to be made available by governments free of charge to resource-poor farmers. The farmers will then be able to grow, save, consume, replant and sell on a small scale into the local economy the resulting rice crop. No new dependencies will be created. When this work started, Zeneca had an initial commercial interest in the nu
