Rice Genome Mapped

rampant_gerbil writes: "Apparently a company called Syngenta has sequenced the entire genome of the rice plant. Here is a link to the corporate press release. As the story points out, "Rice is the model for the other grasses, including corn and wheat," so this sounds like quite a milestone. Now if only they would engineer some nacho cheese flavor into those rice cakes..."

Comments

Re:They're forgetting something

[Chris Johnson]

Nah- here's how it works. The rice is sold at a loss, like game consoles. Then the company bleeds the farmer dry on fertilizer, pesticides etc. without which the new crop won't grow. The old crop grew fine, just not at USA agribusiness efficiencies, but the new crop needs a USA-type support structure to grow, which is not cheap.

It's hardly hypothetical. Loads of farmers in places like India have gone from being subsistence-level (not 'hungry', just 'poor') to being bankrupt with a pile of fancy seed and unable to make the payments on the infrastructure. At first they tended to commit suicide but apparently selling off kidneys has become a more popular option, at least to start with- death is probably still the end result.

It's not the food, not at all- it's the freaking process! You can't convert subsistence farmers to USA-style agribusiness. They can't afford crop dusters...

Re:GNU for Biology?

[nomadic]

We shouldn't even need a GNU-type license for this; nobody should be able to patent any form of DNA, or even the methods used to analyze and modify genetic material. This is especially the case involving crops that feed a major percentage of the world's population. Some of the biotech patent issues make software patents look sane by comparison; anyone remember how one Texas-based company patented Basmati rice? Apparently several thousand years of cultivation by Indian farmers didn't constitute prior use; this is being challenged by the Indian government, but that the USPO actually accepted this in the first place is a sign of nearly criminal incompetence.
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