- Studies on Bt Toxins Recounted

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) is currently leading the Diversification Agriculture Project Alliance (DAPA) for Latin America, a public-private research partnership where small-scale producers of high-value crops are given the opportunity to collaborate with scientists, food processing specialists, and retailers. These plants include the continent’s specialty crops, such as coffee and medicinal herbs.

With members of the farming, research, and business sectors working together, DAPA aims to “develop sophisticated ways of managing the agricultural product supply chain, and to develop products with exclusive qualities that will be capable of fetching premium market prices.” It also aims to identify the best environmental conditions farmers need to grow quality crops that meet specific consumer preferences.

DAPA is a three-year project supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (GTZ).

Find out more about DAPA at http://ictupdate.cta.int/
index.php/article/articleview/534/1/96.

EGGPLANT LICENSE AGREEMENT SIGNED

The license agreement for the ABSP II’s Fruit and Shoot Borer-Resistant (FSBR) Eggplant was signed January 30, 2006 at the Conference Room of the Office of the Chancellor, University of the Philippines, Los Baños (UPLB). ABSP II is the second phase of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project, a wide partnership involving both private and public institutions that aim to produce high quality bio-engineered crops for target countries in the developing world.

The Agreement was signed by three institutes. These included: 1) the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (MAHYCO), technology donor, represented by Director Kannan Ragunathan; 2) Sathguru Management Consultants Private Limited, as technology facilitator, represented by Dr. Brent Zehr, Joint Director for Research; and 3) UPLB, represented by Chancellor Rey Luis I. Velasco. Dr. Ronnie Coffman, co-director of ABSP II and director of the International Programs of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, signed as ABSP II witness. Dr. Desiree Hautea, director of the Institute of Plant Breeding, UPLB (IPB-UPLB) and ABSP II-Southeast Asia Regional Coordinator, signed as witness for the university.

The said agreement will expedite the transfer of the seeds of the crosses produced between the MAHYCO Bt parental line and selected Philippine varieties. Likewise, the agreement will facilitate the crop’s eventual commercialization in the Philippines.

FSBR eggplant will be resistant to one of eggplant’s most rabid pests, the fruit and shoot borer. Once successfully produced and assessed through regulatory channels, it will be deployed for use in the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh. For more information, visit http://www.absp2.cornell.edu/

CASSAVA SEQUENCING URGED

“For a fraction of the cost of other, much larger genomic and postgenomic projects, sequencing cassava could bring this important crop to the forefront of modern science, generating new possibilities for its agronomic improvement.” This was stated in a letter to the journal Science, by Drs. Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Claude Fauquet of the Danforth Plant Science Center; M.S. Swaminathan of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation; Norman Borlaug of Texas A&M University; and Cristian Samper of the Smithsonian Institution.

The authors acknowledge the power that genome sequencing has been able to impart to agricultural biotechnology, but they ask that this application should be used to address the needs of majority of the world’s people. In line with this, they believe that the best way to maximize the beneficial impact of the technology is to give high priority to sequencing the genomes of crops essential to resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Cassava, they note, is one such crop, as it feeds 600 million people each day, and is an important source of dietary calories in the tropics, after rice and maize.

“It’s time to harness part of our technical capacity to advance crops like cassava that are central to the livelihoods and health of half a billion people,” the authors added.

Download the complete letter at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/311/5760/468b.pdf

CHALLENGES TO IPR AND CROP BIOSECURITY EXPLORED

Kauser Abdulla Malik of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and Yusuf Zafar of the National Insitute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering in Pakistan establish the main challenges of developing countries in terms of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and crop biosecurity. The authors enumerate these challenges in their article, “Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Biotechnology: A Contribution to Crop Biosecurity,” published in the Asian Biotechnology and Development Review.

These challenges include the need to:

The authors conclude that there is strong evidence of convergence, improved cooperation, and integration of services and functions among the food safety, plant, animal, life, health, and environmental sectors to achieve better regulation of biosecurity or sustenance of biogenetic resources among developing countries. This change is due to increasing international agricultural trade and travel, and biotechnological and information technology advances within a multicultural approach.

More articles on biosecurity and biosafety in the Vol. 8, No. 1 issue of Asian Biotechnology and Development Review. Its website is at http://www.ris.org.in/abdr.html. Email Kauser Adbullar Malik, corresponding author, at kamalik@comsats.net.pk.

BIOTECH INFO SOURCES ASSESSED

Gary J. Wingenbach and Tracy A. Rutherford of Texas A&M University conducted a survey to investigate the “Trust, Bias, and Fairness of Information Sources for Biotechnology Issues.” Their work appears in the latest issue of AgBioForum.

The researchers surveyed 50 journalists from Texas, U.S.A., and 40 national agriculture journalists representing newspapers and television media in the same country. On the whole, respondents believed that university scientists and researchers, as well as newspapers, were trustworthy, unbiased, and fair in communicating agricultural biotechnology issues. They perceived activist groups, on the other hand, as the complete opposite.

The surveyed journalists were opposed to public opinion outweighing scientists’ opinions when making decisions about scientific research. They also believed that television is untrustworthy and biased, indicating that “media professionals as a whole have concerns with one type of their profession,” the researchers write.

Find out more at http://www.agbioforum.org/v8n4/v8n4a03
-wingenbach.htm.

SURVEY RESULTS ON PLANT-MADE VACCINES RELEASED

Plants are already well on their way to becoming the drugstores of the future. They have shown promise as vehicles for the production and oral delivery of vaccines, as they 1) carry no risk of the finished product being contaminated with animal pathogens, 2) provide a heat-stable environment for keeping the vaccine fresh, and 3) eliminate the risk of injection-related hazards.

This so-called “pharming” technology presents “an interesting intersection between medical treatments and the use of genetically modified (GM) food crops,” as Dwayne D. Kirk and Kim McIntosh of Arizona State University write. Their article, “Social Acceptance of Plant-Made Vaccines: Indications from a Public Survey,” appears in the latest issue of AgBioForum.
The researchers surveyed 706 respondents from Phoenix, Arizona, USA regarding their opinion on the use of transgenic plants as vaccines. Their results show that there is strong potential support for a plant-made vaccine (PMV). In particular, 59.8% of the respondents expressed some preference for an oral vaccine, and 68% expressed some level of acceptance for use of a PMV. However, about 40.9% of the respondents believed that most vaccines are already genetically modified, when in fact only 6% of all vaccines licensed for distribution and use are produced by genetically engineered subunit technologies.

Find out more at http://www.agbioforum.org/v8n4/v8n4a05
-kirk.htm.

Scientists have long studied plants as vehicles to produce vaccines, antibodies, antigens, and hormones, and their efforts are beginning to pay off. Such transgenic plants can provide a low-cost system to produce such molecules, including interleukin-12 (IL-12), which can, among others, enhance cytotoxic responses and elicit significant anti-tumor and anti-angiogenesis effects. These stop tumors and tumor-feeding blood vessels from forming, cutting off nutrients from a potentially dangerous growth.

In a recent issue of Transgenic Research, Abel Gutierrez-Ortega, of the Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del I.P.N., and colleagues were able to effect “Expression of functional interleukin-12 from mouse in transgenic tomato plants.”

Researchers used the molecule’s gene, expressed it under the CaMV 35S promoter, and introduced the gene to tomato plants. They found that IL-12, when expressed, was functional, and accumulated to high levels in transgenic tomato fruits and leaves.

Read the abstract at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11248-005
-1464-8. Subscribers to Transgenic Research can download the complete article on the same page.

NEW MODEL DESIGNED TO STUDY SOYBEAN

In “A Gene-Based Model to Simulate Soybean Development and Yield Responses to Environment,” C. D. Messina and colleagues of the University of Florida develop and test a procedure meant to predict how well soybean can grow in certain environments, and with specific genetic loci. Their work appears in the latest issue of Crop Science.

An existent model called CROPGRO-Soybean predicts yields for soybean based on the crop’s surrounding environment. In this research paper, scientists combined the model with genetic data. First, a field experiment was carried out to obtain phenotypic data for a set of near-isogenic lines with known genotypes at six loci; these data were then used to estimate cultivar-specific parameters for their model; and, finally, the same parameters were expressed as linear functions of the known gene loci.

Researchers combined their gene data with CROPGRO-Soybean, and were able to more accurately predict the time to maturity and yield levels of a separate field of soybeans. Their results suggest that gene-based approaches can be used to effectively assess cultivar performance, and should thus be utilized in plant breeding.

Subscribers to Crop Science can read the complete article at http://crop.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/46/1/456. Other readers can take a look at the abstract at http://crop.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/1/456.

STUDIES ON BT TOXINS RECOUNTED

Biotech crops expressing Bt toxins have been used for a decade, and have allowed farmers all over the world to use reduced amounts of insecticides. The ubiquity of such crops has also allowed the Bt toxin class to become the most widely used in the world. What does this bode for regulation and safety assessment, now that more Bt crops are being developed, and will soon be released in the market?

Jorg Romeis and colleagues of the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture offer their perspectives on “Transgenic Crops Expressing Bacillus thuringiensis Toxins and Biological Control.” Their article appears in the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology.

The researchers look at studies already conducted on the safety of Bt crops by reviewing the results of those performed in the laboratory or glasshouse environment; experiments performed to assess the effects of the toxin on predators and parasitoids; and those conducted in a field or semi-field situation. They conclude that semi-field studies are likely to be the most accurate, as they offer some control over the environment, while at the same time keeping plants and predators in close-to-field conditions. They also perceive field studies to be less accurate, as such conditions are harder to keep under control, and their results thus cannot be interpreted conclusively.

In the studies reviewed, Bt plants have been shown to have no direct adverse effects on non-target species. Such data, however, cannot predict the effects of other insecticidal proteins in future GM crops. Thus, the writers recommend that: 1) researchers take great care in designing experiments, such that their results will be relevant for field situations; 2) insecticide treatments should be considered as the baseline for risk assessment; and 3) standards and protocols should be established regarding issues of non-target effects of Bt crops.

Subscribers to Nature Biotechnology can read the complete article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt1180.

Asia BioBusiness, in cooperation with National Institute of Education, Singapore and ISAAA, are proud to present a training course on “Commercialization of Biotechnology Crops in Asia: Moving from ideas to useful products in farmers’ fields.” The course aims to provide a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the principles, approach, regulatory requirements, information needs, awareness-building techniques, and stewardship requirements for commercializing a biotechnology seed product for widespread farmer adoption. The course hopes to provide participants with opportunities to network with experts and to become knowledgeable about supporting resources in the region and worldwide, which are relevant to the commercialization of agricultural biotechnology.

The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) and International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Application (ISAAA) are organizing a national discussion on “GM Crops: Socio-Economic and Environmental Impact Assessment.” This will be held at the NAAS Lecture Room, NASC Complex, DPS Marg, Pusa, New Delhi, India, on the 22nd of February, 2006. The program will feature international experts who have been evaluating and monitoring the global socio-economic impact of genetically modified (GM) crops during the first decade of their commercialization, providing an opportunity to discuss regulatory requirements for assuring their agronomic performance, environmental safety, and food safety. The program will also highlight Bt cotton and its impact in Indian agriculture. For further information, contact Bhagirath Choudhary, ISAAA at b.choudhary@cgiar.org and M Vijaya Kumar, Executive Secretary, NAAS at naas@vsnl.com or mvijayakumar@naas-india.org

SCIENCE IN SOCIETY CONFERENCE TO BE HELD FOR AFRICA

A Science-in-Society/Society-in-Science - African Forum will be held in Port Elizabeth South Africa, on March 1-3, 2006. The conference, organized by the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) will focus on the need to develop science communication and to establish collaborative networks on the African continent. SAASTA aims to advance public awareness, appreciation, and engagement of science, engineering, and technology in South Africa. For further information, contact ascc@saasta.ac.za or visit http://www.fest.org.za/ascc/.