**1. Introduction**

Research was initiated in the early 1990s which led in 2000 to the publication of the technology behind what came to be known as Golden Rice [1, 2]. From the outset, the intention was to create a source of vitamin A in the endosperm of rice, as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency. Philanthropy and the public sector funded the research [1]. In 2001, the inventors, Professor Ingo Potrykus and Dr. (now Professor) Peter Beyer, assigned their patents to Syngenta for commercial exploitation as part of a transaction which obliged the company to assist the inventors' humanitarian and altruistic objectives [1, 3, 4]. At the same time, the nutritional technology was donated by its inventors for use in developing countries [3, 4]. The inventors licenced a network of Asian government-owned rice research institutes to deliver their objectives. Product development was initiated through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the network. The whole network,

including IRRI, worked to a common set of goals defined in licences each institution signed with the inventors. The terms included that there would be no charge for the nutritional technology and it would only be introduced to publicly owned rice varieties. Improvements were made to the technology by Syngenta scientists [5]. In 2005 and 2006, pursuant to Syngenta's legal obligations entered into with the inventors in 2001, Syngenta provided selected transformation events of the improvements to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board. The Humanitarian Board, via Syngenta and IRRI, made these new versions available to the Golden Rice licensee network [4, 6]. In 2004 Syngenta ceased its commercial interest in Golden Rice [7]. From 2004 development was again only funded by philanthropy and the public sector; the national budgets of Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam; as well as the US National Institutes of Health together with the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations and USAID. Golden Rice is a not-for-profit project: no individual, nor organisation involved with its development, has any financial interest in the outcome.

To date the Golden Rice project has principally engaged plant scientists. Activist opposition to Golden Rice has been led principally by non-scientists, who have been very successful in developing a narrative about Golden Rice and gmo crops which serves the activist's purpose1 but is fundamentally inaccurate [8]. Further background to the development of Golden Rice, including the political dimensions, is detailed elsewhere [6, 9, 10].

 A few years ago, at Tufts University, USA, I gave a presentation about Golden Rice. The symposium was organised by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy whose strategic aims today include 'Reduce nutrition-related health inequities' and 'Promote food systems that increase agricultural sustainability while improving human health' [11]. I was dismayed to learn that the anti-gmo and anti-Golden Rice activists' narrative was widely accepted by the participants—all of whom were studying or working in nutrition and well aware of nutritional inequities in public health.

Without adoption, that is, regular growth and consumption of Golden Rice by populations in countries where rice is the staple and VAD is problematic, Golden Rice cannot deliver any public health and welfare benefits. Adoption requires cooperative working by different specialists, including medical, nutritional and public health specialists [12]. This chapter is designed to answer anticipated questions from such specialists, to facilitate adoption of Golden Rice as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency.
