Billions of people around the world eat rice as a daily staple. To make it more nutritious,
Seattle-based PATH is taking ordinary rice, blending it with micro nutrients and molding it into fortified rice-like grains.

PATH's new Ultra Rice is being introduced around the world to solve vitamin and mineral deficiencies that cause a host of health problems, from birth defects to blindness.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PATH

Ultra Rice in bins ready for serving to a school in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Tomorrow the Technology Museum of Innovation in San Jose is recognizing the global health non-profit's work on Ultra Rice with a 2009 Tech Award, given to innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity.

It will be the third Tech Award PATH has received from the museum. PATH was a Health Award Laureate for its heat-sensitive vaccine vial monitor in 2007 and for its pre-filled Uniject syringes for vaccine delivery in 2003.

Ultra Rice was pioneered by a local father-and-son team, Dr. James P. Cox and his son, R. W. Duffy Cox. at Lynden-based Bon Dente International, the creators of technologies from oyster shucking equipment to methods of eliminating salmonella in eggs. In 1997, the Cox family donated the Ultra Rice patent to PATH.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PATH

School girls in a meal program in India eat fortified Ultra Rice developed by Seattle-based PATH.

Ultra Rice is now being developed by PATH under Project Director Dipika Matthias, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. PATH has already introduced Ultra Rice into large-scale meal programs funded by governments to test its benefits.

PATH launched a pilot program in December with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and the Naandi Foundation in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Success depends on how effectively Ultra Rice can be commercialized. PATH is now trying to demonstrate successful models of supply and demand.

The non-profit partners with local pasta manufacturers to produce the Ultra Rice grains and works with rice millers and government food programs to blend and distribute the fortified rice.

It has licensed the technology to commercial partners in Brazil, India and Colombia, who are required to make their Ultra Rice grains available to public-sector buyers and consumers at preferential prices. PATH expects the price of fortified rice to be between 2 and 5 percent higher than the cost of traditional rice.

Longevity Vita Bio-Tech, PATH's first commercial partner in China, plans to integrate pasta-extrusion machinery into its Beijing factory to produce Ultra Rice grains. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention owns part of Longevity Vita and will help introduce the product in China, according to PATH.

Besides PATH, previous Tech Award winners in health include DataDyne, which developed an open-source program for healthcare workers to collect and share data using mobile devices, and MedMira, which invented technology for a single test to detect HIV and hepatitis in three minutes.

The Tech Award winners are honored at an annual gala in San Jose, and one laureate in each award category receives a $50,000 cash prize. This year's awards gala will be held on Nov. 19.