Om Parkash Dhankher is trying to engineer a better rice plant. The scientist's pursuit, however, is not in the name of culinary delights. It's in the name of saving lives.

Currently, arsenic in topsoil where food crops are grown in Asian nations shrinks crop yields or renders rice toxic, according to Dhankher, an assistant professor of plant, soil and insect sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The toxin can get inside both rice kernels and straw. The problem is especially severe for millions of people in Bangladesh and West Bengal, who are already affected by such poisoning, according to the World Health Organization. Long-term exposure to the heavy metal is linked to skin, lung, urinary bladder and kidney cancer.

To combat the contamination problem, Dhankher is genetically engineering a rice plant that resists uptake of arsenic. He is also engineering non-food plants that would pull arsenic from topsoil to clean it for safe farming. He spoke with the IndUS Business Journal about his work.

How does arsenic in topsoil contribute to the current rice shortage?

In Bangladesh, the West Bengal part of India [and] many parts of India, Thailand, Cambodia and parts of China, there is a lot of arsenic contamination, because underground water contains arsenic. They are pumping the contaminated water out to irrigate the fields because rice requires a lot of water. Due to the irrigation with the arsenic-contaminated water, a very high concentration of arsenic builds up in the topsoil. Because arsenic is phytotoxic, it's causing toxicity [in the rice straw and kernels] and causing a loss of yield - it's just like any other stress. There are reports that up to a certain level of arsenic, there's up to a 10 percent to 25 percent reduction in the rice yield.

[Another problem is that at] elevated levels, where it is toxic but it is not killing the plant ... arsenic ... comes into our food chain. The rice straw ... is used as animal fodder and the arsenic comes in the food chain via animal or dairy products.

Talk about the rice plants that you are currently working on.

We are engineering food crops, especially rice ... that will resist arsenic uptake. The crop will be higher, and yield will be higher. The rice will become arsenic tolerant.

Will it be safe for people to eat?

[Yes.] The way we are doing it is we are working on several genes. We are trying to enhance the arsenic resistance in the plants and block the arsenic intake into the above-ground tissues, or block the arsenic uptake in the plant [completely].

And you're also working on plants that help remove arsenic from soil?

Previously, I developed a technology while I was at the University of Georgia in Athens for engineered plants that were sucking up more arsenic and they were highly resistant [to the effects of arsenic]. They were basically for clean up. This is called phytoremediation, a process of using plants to clean up the soil, to get rid of a pollutant. For that, we are using nonfood crops - we don't want to use food crops because people could accidentally eat those, and worsen the situation.

What kind of crops are they?

Currently, one of the crops is nonfood industry oilseed. It's called crambe abyssinica. It's nonfood, high biomass, fast growing, and has a short life cycle ... of 45 days. The idea is that because in those parts of the world the farmers have small landholdings, they need to cultivate their food every year to produce food for their family and for profit. They cannot afford to lose the land for cleaning up. You can grow these [arsenic clean-up] crops in between wheat and rice. You can do it continuously, without interrupting the main crop cycle.

Are the clean-up plants available yet for use?

No. ... Phytoremediation is a fairly new approach. ... But, it's certainly doable and feasible and more environmentally friendly, cost-effective and aesthetically pleasing, because you are not disturbing the environment. [Currently] if you have a contaminated soil, what you do is basically dig it up [and] put in landfill.

What about the rice plants - when will they be commercially available?

When you develop a crop ... it has to go through several trials, regulation processes and then it is approved. That wait will be several years, maybe two to four years. It depends on whether the government agencies will show enough interest to support this kind of work ... or the private companies who are willing to take this technology from us and bring it to the market.

Where are you at in your research?

We are putting in some genes and we got some exciting results, but we are improving more. [We are also experimenting with genes that make the rice grow under other stresses, such as salt or drought.] We are combining, basically, several genes at a time. ... But it depends on the funding situation. Currently, this project is not funded by any federal agencies; I've been doing this just with my start-up funds that I got when I started as a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I'm looking for larger funding from federal agencies.