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Taking Stock of
Biotech
At a biotechnology conference held recently in Guadalajara,
Mexico, by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations, disputes about genetically modified crops were
notably absent, as a diverse group of participants - including
CGIAR scientists - engaged in a timely and productive
research-based dialogue about the wide range of biotechnologies now
in use.
This is not to say that reservations about some biotechnologies
were overlooked. In the opening plenary session, a small scale
farmer from the Philippines took vigorous exception to the idea of
researchers "targeting biotechnologies to the poor," as a
conference document put it, and argued for active farmer
involvement in research. Participants also heard the voice of civil
society on issues such as the concentration of transgenic crops in
the hands of multinational companies and the possible dangers of
introducing these materials in centers of crop genetic diversity,
like Mexico.
Yet, hardened ideological positions on such issues did not
define the dynamic of the conference deliberations. Rather,
participants systematically took stock of a wide range of recent
experiences with biotechnology in developing countries, drawing
lessons from past successes and failures, and they looked to the
future, underlining challenges and examining options for dealing
with these effectively.
A good time and place to re-examine
biotechnology
Both the timing and location of the conference, which brought
together about 300 participants from 68 countries, were
significant. Organized against a background of deteriorating global
food security and of rising concern about the negative impacts of
climate change on developing country agriculture, the conference
recognized a growing consensus that investment in research needs to
be renewed and that increased agricultural productivity must be at
the heart of any strategy for reducing hunger and poverty.
Photo: IRRI.
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With respect to the location, it is important to recall that
Mexico was among the first countries to witness mass demonstrations
against rising food prices in 2008. In response to major challenges
and opportunities for its agriculture, Mexico has built a
significant biotechnology capacity - which Mariano Ruiz-Funes
Macedo, undersecretary of agriculture, speaking in the opening
session, said consists of about 1,000 scientists working in 100
laboratories.
Mexico thus provided a particularly good vantage point from
which to re-examine the role of biotechnology in confronting
agriculture's multiple crises and the level of
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investment this work merits - issues that were implicit in
the conference organizers' call for a decisive move
"beyond business-as-usual" in agricultural research for
development.
A broad overview of biotechnology in developing
countries
To inform the conference discussions, FAO prepared a set of
detailed background papers, including one each on five key sectors:
crops, forests, livestock, fisheries and aquaculture, and food
processing and food safety. These documents, featuring instructive
case studies, gauge the current status of biotechnologies in
developing countries and explore possible applications.
A sixth document deals with policy issues - such as the need for
orienting biotechnologies to the needs of the poor - that are
involved in strengthening national capacity to make informed
decisions about the use of biotechnologies in food and agriculture.
The delegations of FAO member states as well as representatives of
national, international and civil society organizations offered a
rich collection of comments on key aspects of these issues -
including the farmers' role in research, gender equity, public
participation in key decisions, intellectual property rights,
biosafety and biotechnology training and education.
A seventh document draws lessons learned from the experience of
developing countries, outlines options available to them and
presents a lengthy set of action priorities, with a sharp focus on
building national capacities. (See the web link below for access to
all conference documents.)
One inescapable overall conclusion, said FAO assistant
director-general Modibo Traoré, is that, while there are many cases
of successful application of biotechnologies in developing
countries, they have so far been used much more to address the
needs of farmers in the developed world - a situation he insisted
must change.
Reflecting national
realities
One striking feature of the conference was its wide scope,
covering diverse sectors and starting from a wide definition of
biotechnology, taken from the Convention on Biological
Diversity.
An article in the Mexican media insinuated that the broad
definition of biotechnology was merely a subterfuge for keeping
transgenic crops under the radar, so to speak. But the organizers
insisted that, on the contrary, they were merely reflecting the
reality of developing country experience, which ranges from the use
of so-called traditional biotechnologies, such as tissue culture
and artificial insemination, to the use of more sophisticated
techniques, like molecular markers and the controversial option of
genetic modification.
The important point, according to Shivaji Pandey, director of
FAO's Plant Production and Protection Division, is for
countries to have comprehensive strategies, policies and regulatory
frameworks, which neither stifle technical innovation nor treat
biotechnologies as a panacea but rather ensure that decisions about
them are well-informed and remain a national prerogative.
CGIAR scientists weigh in
Several CGIAR researchers contributed to the discussions.
The main reason international centers use biotechnologies is
that these tools are essential in unlocking the potential of
genetic resources for purposes such as crop improvement, said
Thomas Lumpkin, director general of the International Maize and
Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), who delivered a plenary
presentation on behalf of the Alliance of CGIAR Centers.
Center scientists have already employed molecular genomic
techniques to characterize numerous samples of many crop species,
explained Dave Hoisington, deputy director general-research at the
International Crops Research Institute (ICRISAT), and they are now
considering plans to sequence the genomes of entire germplasm
collections. In facilitating a session on genetic resources, he
referred to them as "the building blocks of global food
security."
Those comments echoed a central point of the keynote message by
M.S. Swaminathan, chair of the M.S. Swaminathan Research
Foundation. He suggested that, just as biodiversity has served as
the basic raw material for efforts so far to achieve sustainable
food security, it can also provide the feedstock for
biotechnologies designed to help make agriculture more climate
resilient.
For both purposes, researchers have generated an impressive
array of genomic resources in recent years, including various types
of molecular markers. Overviews of such work were presented and
discussed in a parallel session facilitated by Rajeev Varshney, who
has a joint appointment with ICRISAT and the CGIAR's Generation
Challenge Program (GCP). Genomic resources are particularly
abundant now for cereal crops, though good progress is being made
as well with grain legumes, animals and tree crops. Such resources
are so plentiful, in fact, that they constitute a kind of
"information tsunami," as one presenter put it, which
presents researchers with major challenges in bioinformatics and
data management.
Putting genomic resources to work through a variety of
strategies referred to collectively as molecular breeding was the
subject of a parallel session facilitated by Jean-Marcel Ribaut,
director of the GCP, which is hosted by CIMMYT. CGIAR Centers have
registered important successes with such strategies, including the
development of pearl millet varieties with resistance to downy
mildew and rice varieties tolerant to flooding.
The session called attention to various support services and
networks now available for developing country scientists, including
the Molecular Breeding Platform recently launched by the GCP, which
will provide breeders in developing countries with better access to
tools for modern breeding. The session also examined factors and
prospects for success with molecular breeding, which vary greatly
among developing countries. A key challenge for each country is to
carefully weigh the cost-effectiveness of molecular breeding,
compared with conventional approaches, a task that is still less
than straightforward.
As Lumpkin stressed, the CGIAR Centers offer developing
countries valuable assistance in meeting such challenges through
collaborative research on a wide array of biotechnologies,
conducted increasingly through innovative public-private
partnerships, backed by an unwavering commitment to strengthening
national research capacities.
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