Plant Biotech Blog

By C.K Prakash
DesMoines Register
October 20, 2006

In 1965 and 1966, crop failures created massive food shortages in my native India, which produced only about 10 million metric tons of wheat annually. Only emergency shipments of American grain prevented widespread famine.

In 2006, India is a net exporter of food, producing 73 million metric tons of wheat. This is thanks in large measure to Iowa’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution he championed of new crop varieties and farming practices, including pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

This week, as the World Food Prize honors those who have fed millions globally, famine still threatens several parts of the world - on a scale that emergency shipments cannot hope to solve.

In sub-Saharan Africa, dramatically increased yields are needed to save and improve the lives of its many people who depend on the land. A “gene revolution” of biotechnology holds great promise, but anti-science and elitism have stood in its way.

European nations, especially, and their misperception of biotechnology as unsafe are responsible for this. As a result, many African governments limit farmers’ access to biotech seeds. Some have even refused emergency food aid of biotech crops — fearing not that the food itself as unsafe, but that farmers might plant and harvest the donated grain and jeopardize exports of future surpluses to affluent nations with a zero-tolerance mentality.

Anti-technology rhetoric apparently carries more weight with European policymakers than the reality of starvation in a distant land. While activists uproot biotech test plots in Europe, small farmers in Africa cannot feed their families because their cassava and cowpeas succumb to viral diseases and insects devour their grains. So disease- and insect-protected crops remain unavailable to poor people trying to feed their families or eke out some income.

As Borlaug points out, affluent nations can afford elitist policies and pay more for food produced by “natural” methods. But the world’s 1 billion chronically poor and hungry people cannot.

Fortunately, not every region shares the European mind-set. An estimated 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries — including in Europe — planted biotech crops in 2005. None of the activists’ imagined safety fears have materialized. And the results have been phenomenal.

Insect-protected crops have eliminated the need for millions of pounds of chemical insecticides. Herbicide-tolerant crops have reduced the use of weed-killers and enabled farmers to use tillage practices that save soil and energy.

New types of vitamin-rich rice are moving ahead to prevent childhood blindness in rice-dependent regions of the world. African scientists are developing herbicide-tolerant maize with resistance to striga, a parasitic weed that causes nearly $1 billion in damage. Other benefits on the horizon include crops tolerant to drought and disease.

These improvements translate into increased yields to meet the growing global demand for food, feed, fiber and biofuels on an ever-decreasing amount of land available for farming.

The potential of biotechnology is seemingly limitless, but the obstacles are formidable. For much of the world, the United States is the model for regulating biotechnology, with its thorough and practical examination of all likely safety and environmental risks.

Yet other regions, especially Europe, have opted for hyper-cautionary systems that de facto prevent wide-scale adoption of biotechnology. Beneath it all is an anti-science, anti-technology ideology and fear.

There are strong indications that this all will ease in the next decade. Consumer benefits are coming or are already here, such as vegetable oils that prevent heart disease or cancer. Consumers in affluent countries will soon learn of the benefits that producers from Iowa to Africa already know, and they will care less about the false elitist claims that deny such benefits to those who most need them.

Very soon, Borlaug’s lifesaving vision will be extended for a new generation. The “gene revolution” will continue what began with the “green revolution,” and millions of lives will be saved or improved around the world.

C. S. PRAKASH is a professor at Tuskegee University

Financial Express
October 23, 2006

Rice is going through a technological revolution for higher yield potential and to bring about further improvements both in inbred lines and hybrids. The fact that hybrids in rice are becoming popular in the country is one reason which is pushing up genetic research in rice for better lines. However, the progress of adoption of hybrid rice is slow compared to adoption of varieties. One of the main factors attributed to this is the non-availability of wider range of parental lines and narrow genetic base of rice, besides many other factors. Genetic diversity of plant types could help to bring in resistance, improve nutrient efficiency and grain quality with biotech tools.

This has created a momentum among molecular biologists and rice breeders around the world to undertake gene pyramiding and conduct large scale mapping of the rice population in different ecological regions. In fact, the research is moving towards IPR-based thus involving itself into global issues such as policy and environment.

BC Viraktamath, project director, Directorate of Rice Research (DRR), Hyderabad, says that there is a need to improve parental lines with a broad genetic base. Efforts have been initiated at DRR for identification of molecular markers for wide hybrids and for creating a new generation of hybrids. Not to leave behind the country’s prized possession of basmati rice. The demand for aromatic rice varieties too is increasing for which site specific characters are being worked out.

In fact, genetic variability is the key for development of new genotypes with desired combination of traits. Some of the key developments include fact identifying suitable salt tolerant rice genotypes for coastal saline areas of Eastern India by the Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack; department of rice, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore is in the process of development of drought resistance rice lines using marker-assisted selections is working on drought tolerant varieties and it is considered as a valid breeding target to partially compensate for the loss in yield caused due to erratic rainfall. Similarly, the DRR is working on salt tolerance components traits in rice, and there are many more targeting different disease and region-specific problems.

Interestingly, most of the R&D is tuned towards developing drought-resistance rice. Drought is a major constraint for rice production and yield stability in rain-fed ecosystems.

Moreover, the development of high yielding and drought tolerant rice varieties will improve rice production. Consider this. Over 17 million hectares of rice is grown in shallow rain-fed lowlands in the country.

According to Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) officials, rice is considered a model plant for genetic and molecular biology because of its genome size of close to 430 Mb and extensive genetic data available on this plant.
Say DRR officials, systematic collection and evaluation of rice germplasm have resulted in identification of useful genotypes having tolerance and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. And, as per the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi information, the rice germplasm holding at the national genebank has reached upto 53,000 accessions. Nearly 30 centres from across the country are estimated to have maintained around 90,000 active germplasm accessions.

Ever since the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project completed the sequencing of the entire rice genome in 2004, researchers are gung ho over new kind of rice plants. Scientists feel that there is a need to develop computational tools and advanced bioinformatics infrastructure for reliable data access of all genetic level information on rice.

By Dean Kleckner, Chairman
Truth About Trade & Technology

Norman Borlaug is often called the father of the Green Revolution. Now it appears that Bill Gates wants to become its son.

Last month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would devote $100 million to African agriculture over the next five years, in combination with a decision by the Rockefeller Foundation to chip in an additional $50 million. They have the ambition of sparking a Green Revolution on the continent that more or less missed the first one.

Africa deserves for them to succeed. It is a blighted land–torn by war, ravaged by disease, and plagued by hunger. In no other place has food production actually decreased in recent years.

Addressing these problems is a worthy project for two titans of philanthropy. The Gates Foundation is the world’s richest philanthropy, following Warren Buffett’s pledge of $31 billion earlier this year; the Rockefeller Foundation, a behemoth in its own right, was crucial in supporting the first Green Revolution.

This time, biotechnology will need to play a key role: The 21st-century’s Green Revolution must also be a Gene Revolution. To be really successful, it will have to be.

The first Green Revolution transformed agriculture in the developing world and made it possible to feed a global population that now numbers more than 6 billion. No single breakthrough was responsible for its success, but rather a medley of factors: improved irrigation, better fertilizer, superior equipment, and new varieties of seed.

Likewise, a new Green Revolution must draw upon many sources of innovation. One of these is biotechnology, which wasn’t available to the original green revolutionaries a generation ago.

Genetically modified crops won’t cure Africa’s problems–they are no panacea. If the nations of that continent are ever to thrive, they will need to undergo serious political and economic reforms. GM foods are just one of several ingredients necessary to solving Africa’s nutritional problems.

Yet they are an indispensable ingredient. Farmers in the United States and around the world have benefited enormously from improved soybeans, corn, and cotton. We’ve planted and harvested more than a billion acres of them in just 10 years. These crops boost yields and reduce costs. They’re good for the environment because they help protect against soil erosion and require fewer applications of herbicide and pesticide. The future is even brighter, especially as biotechnology improves additional commodities. Rice–the world’s most important staple crop–is on the verge of its very own gene revolution.

What’s more, biotechnology is uniquely suited to address a fundamental problem that many poor farmers face: the enormous stumbling block of illiteracy. If farmers can’t read the instructions on their bags of seed, fertilizer, and herbicide, the potential for unintended mistakes increases. Biotech crops, however, require much less maintenance than their conventional counterparts. There are still directions to follow, but they’re less complicated. These seeds may come from the frontiers of science, but they’re right at home in the developing world.

Fortunately, the Gates Foundation already has demonstrated its interest in these approaches, through grants it has given previously. It has refused to accept the anti-scientific paranoia of European activists who seem intent on denying Africans the best agricultural technology the world has to offer.

Just as biotechnology is no cure-all for Africa, the generosity of the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations will only go so far: $150 million is a relative pittance–less than the payroll of the New York Yankees. In 2005, the World Bank spent $537 million on rural development in Africa. Nations that belong to the African Union also have promised to commit a large portion of their budgets to agriculture.

But the involvement of the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations is nevertheless significant. For one thing, it represents a down payment on what may become a much larger investment. But it also carries symbolic weight. This marriage of the world’s wealthiest foundation, created by one of history’s greatest entrepreneurs, with the foundation that made so much of the first Green Revolution possible, sends a clear signal to the world that biotechnology has much to offer even the poorest people on the planet.

Let’s hope that governments now hear their message.

Dean Kleckner is an Iowa farmer, member emeritus of the World Food Prize Board of Advisors and past president of the American Farm Bureau. Mr. Kleckner chairs Truth About Trade and Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org)

Indian Express
Oct 4, 2006
Editorial
With India poised to become the world’s second largest cotton producer, as reported in this newspaper, thanks largely to higher yields from genetically modified cotton, the most important follow-up question to this good news is why are the chances of more breakthroughs being held back by bureaucratic infighting. The department of science and technology and the environment ministry have been battling for months over whose nominee should head the proposed national biotechnology regulatory authority. This body, recommended by the M.S. Swaminathan task force, is to function as a single window for preliminary approval, research evaluation and final clearance, taking care of inter-ministerial wrangles that characterise the current three-stage process. It is surprising there has been no top-of-the-government intervention as yet to sort out this bureaucratic turf battle.

The surprise is greater because India, unlike, say Europe, has a fairly rational GM policy. Of course there have been examples of unnecessary obfuscation by government regulators, which is also one of the reasons Swaminathan advocated a single-window system.

But overall, India’s GM policy has been a reasonably good mixture of positive attitude to new technology and abundant caution while testing it. That the government has set up a special committee that will evaluate independent assessments of field trials for Bt brinjal — the reason is that Bt brinjal, if cleared, will be India’s first GM food crop — is one example of cautious policy. On the other hand, the system of event based clearance — this means once a GM crop from one party has been cleared, other parties planning to employ the same variety need not seek approval — shows policymakers have learnt flexibility.

But this government, which says farming is a high priority, should consider itself warned: its current GM regulation is equipped neither to efficiently handle the flood of applications coming India’s way — GM tomato and golden rice, among others — nor to manage the resultant high intensity NGO activism.