UNITED KINGDOM, March 19, 2002: A row has broken out over public access to the complete DNA sequence of the rice plant. Scientists fear there will be restrictions over who can use the data when it is published in an academic journal. Leading geneticists, including two British Nobel Prize winners, have written to the journal Science to complain. They claim the multinational company Swiss-based agrochemicals giant, Syngenta, will have control over the most important food crop in the developing world if an alleged publication deal goes ahead. Dr. Michael Ashburner of Cambridge University, UK, is among 20 scientists who have signed the letter saying DNA information on rice should be freely available to all researchers. Alex Wijeratna, a campaigner for the development agency ActionAid, said the charity supported the scientists’ calls. Syngenta announced last year that it had decoded the rice genome. It said it would make the information freely available to all scientists. According to ActionAid, 250 patents in rice have been granted so far. Eleven of these belong to Syngenta.
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