GOLDEN RICE.

• Author: Riggs, Mike

Rice is a daily dietary staple for roughly half of humanity, including a disproportionate number of the poorest people on Earth. Unfortunately, while rice is rich in carbohydrates, it's a poor source of essential micronutrients.

In 1984, researchers gathered at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for a five-day conference where they debated this question: "What gene would you put into rice, if you could put in any gene at all?" Most of the answers, as Ed Regis details in Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Super-food, were practical if unimaginative: The idea was to make rice more resistant to drought, disease, or infestation.

But Peter Jennings, who'd developed a strain of rice that matured in 130 days instead of 170 and could produce 10 times the yield of common varieties, had a more novel idea. He wanted to genetically engineer a kind of rice containing beta carotene, which the human body converts into retinol, an essential nutrient for fetal development and night vision.

As Regis documents in his compelling historical...