Rice is an excellent source of carbohydrates, fat, and protein, all of which are all essential nutrients in human health. For the people of developing countries who often suffer from protein deficiency, rice can serve as an inexpensive source of this crucial dietary nutrient. For these reasons, it was important to examine any alterations in these macronutrients upon IR72 modification. However, no statistically significant difference in protein content was found between the transgenic and non-transgenic rice seed, similar to a recent study on transgenic ferritin rice seeds (Gayen et al., 2013).
The lipid content of the transgenic rice seeds (2.03%) was also almost indistinguishable from that of the non-transgenic rice seeds (2.02%). The carbohydrate content of transgenic and non-transgenic rice seeds was 75.84% and 73.66%, respectively, both of these values lying within the suitable reference range reported by OECD (2004). All together, these results revealed that the proximate compositions and nutritional quality of the Xa21 rice seeds are essentially equivalent with the non-transgenic control, as also shown in the previous study (Gayen et al., 2013).