This is the Guardian.

More than 20 years ago, a professor of plant sciences was featured on the front cover of Time magazine among lots of greenery, with the caption,

This Rice could save a million kids a year. He had managed to genetically modify rice to contain

beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. Up to half a million children become

blind each year from vitamin A deficiency and half of those die within 12 months of losing their sight.

It's a leading cause of blindness in the world.

Get them vitamin A is the argument and you will save lives and stop blindness.

It was an exciting discovery but not everyone was impressed.

Some green organizations and farmers among others claimed it could be a Trojan horse for other genetically modified plants,

and raised concerns about the impact it could have on other rice crops and the role of private companies in agriculture. So began a decades long spat.

You've got a hero here which are these scientists and they're golden rice and you've got a villain

which they like to point a

Greenpeace so it makes for a good story. But is it as simple as the scientist

versus the green groups? As this debate rears its head once again with a court in the

Philippines recently banning the commercial growth of golden rice we're taking a

look at the story and asking,

why has it taken so long for this potentially life-saving technology

to reach the fields?

Is it really the silver bullet

so many had hoped for?

And now it's been banned. Is that the end of the story?

I'm the Guardian Science Editor, Ian Sample, and this is science weekly.

...