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Biography |
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Adrian Dubock has a PhD (vertebrate Zoology, Reading University), and is Swiss. After working for the UK Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food he joined ICI in 1977. In 2001 Adrian moved to Switzerland to join Syngenta responsible for Mergers and Acquisitions, Ventures and Intellectual Property Licensing globally. Adrian has lived in four and worked in more than 90 countries with a broad range of agri-business development, strategic and operational responsibilities. For 15 years he also owned and worked a 52 hectare UK grass farm with 320 sheep, (where he first encountered biofortification – but didn’t know it at the time). He retired from Syngenta at the end of 2007. From 2008 – 2014 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Freiburg Institute of Advances Studies, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Germany. In 2013 he was named by Scientific American World View as one of “three agbiotech experts …. for possible solutions to address the global hunger crisis”: recognised personally for bringing philanthropy to industry and with two others in employing science in the service of humanity. In 2000 he proposed the architecture of the Golden Rice project, and conducted and concluded all multiparty related negotiations. He works with the inventors in trying to bring the humanitarian not-for-profit vision to fruition. In April 2015 he collected from the White House a Patents for Humanity Award 2015, awarded to the Golden Rice project, and the project leadership of Peter Beyer, Adrian Dubock, and Ingo Potrykus.
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Abstract |
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An overview of biofortification, supplementation and fortification: Golden Rice as an example for enhancing micronutrient intake |
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Vitamin A deficiency is acknowledged as nutritionally acquired immune deficiency syndrome and most significant contributor to global under 5 years’ child deaths, as well as - separately - responsible for most cases of irreversible child blindness. The deficiency has been recognised by the UN for more than a quarter century as a dreadful scourge of poverty, which can be cheaply controlled and must be. Golden Rice is biofortified rice and potentially a free and sustainable additional source of vitamin A with advantages especially for marginalised populations where rice is the staple diet. Because Golden Rice is a gmo-crop, its approval for planting and use are governed, in about 170 counties, by regulations derived as a result of the provisions of the hugely precautionary Cartagena Protocol to the UN Convention on Biodiversity. The Cartagena Protocol has also adversely affected public opinion about gmo-crops, with suspicions being utilised by activists and business interests with different objectives. Golden Rice’s progress through scientific development towards adoption has been delayed by the suspicions of the Cartagena Protocol. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Health Organisation have once again reviewed global nutrition and, as a result of that review, initiated a consultation on the role of biofortification. It is postulated that current concerns for global health may at last start to disempower overstated concerns for environment, with respect to gmo-crops. This will be too late for Golden Rice, but eventually may facilitate more rapid progress than hitherto possible, other biofortification projects. |
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