Nippon Paper Test Farming Hay-Fever Alleviating Rice

JCNN News Summaries - Japan Corporate News Network, Sep 6, 2006 by Chris Lui

Tokyo, Sept 6, 2006 - (JCN) - Nippon Paper Group has started test farming a rice which could alleviate hay-fever symptoms. The rice is specially developed using MAT vector system, a bio technology for genetically extracting the necessary genomes, in this case an epitope into the rice.

The epitope will act as a vaccine to the hay-fever. Hence people eating this rice will receive less hay-fever symptoms when the season arrives. The project was commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.

Nippon paper will set up a large greenhouse of 500 square meters on the island of Komatsu. With proper light and temperature control, the greenhouse will yield yearly production of 700 kilograms of rice.