Comparative analysis of nutritional compositions of transgenic high iron rice with its non-transgenic counterpart.

Iron is an essential micronutrient for human nutrition and polished rice contains very low amount of iron. Rice with high iron content in seed endosperm has been developed by insertion of soybean ferritin gene under the control of the endosperm specific glutelin promoter into the genome of indica rice line IR68144. The nutritional composition of the brown and milled rice grain has been compared with that of the non-transgenic rice of the same variety. In this study, the nutritional components, as well as the anti-nutrient levels, were measured. Our studies established that apart from the increased level of iron and zinc in transgenic seeds, the nutritional quality of both the brown and milled rice grains from the transgenic line was substantially equivalent to that of the non-transgenic rice plants. The result clearly shows that the measured amounts of the nutritional components are well within the range of values reported for other commercial lines.