JUST OFF Highway 40, on the edge of one of the biggest research parks in the US, lies an angular building with reflective windows. In the lobby, a basket of plastic fruits and vegetables rotates inside a glass case and a computer monitor displays weather and market information. Deep in the building are laboratories, where chemists work. The company motto proclaimed on its brochure is 鈥淗elping Feed the World鈥�. Even so, the place feels far removed from the tobacco and cotton fields of the surrounding North Carolina countryside and further still from the small family farms of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Welcome to the headquarters of Rh么ne-Poulenc Ag Company, one of the world鈥檚 biggest producers of pesticides 鈥� and soon to be one of its biggest promoters of genetically engineered crops. Rh么ne-Poulenc has joined forces with a Californian biotechnology company called Calgene in developing a genetically engineered cotton with built-in resistance to a herbicide called bromoxynil. Spraying natural cotton with bromoxynil kills off weeds, but it also kills off the crop. That won鈥檛 happen with the engineered variety because it carries a bacterial gene encoding an enzyme that detoxifies bromoxynil. This spring, Stoneville Pedigree Seed Company (owned by Calgene) expects to start selling the seeds. Smart science. And smart commerce, too: if cotton growers switch to the engineered variety, sales of bromoxynil could climb, which would suit Rh么ne-Poulenc down to the ground. It鈥檚 one of the biggest producers of the stuff.
But wait, weren鈥檛 we once told that genetic engineering would make pesticides and herbicides obsolete? Doesn鈥檛 this instead sound like a company using genetics to sell chemicals? The official line is that the new 鈥淏XN cotton鈥� may reduce the total amount of herbicides farmers use. A sprinkling of bromoxynil could replace larger quantities of other nastier chemicals, explains plant physiologist Joe Hope in his office at Rh么ne-Poulenc in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. But cotton farmers apply as many as eight different herbicides and no one yet knows just how the balance will tilt when BXN cotton reaches the marketplace.
Advertisement
Other things are much clearer. Rh么ne-Poulenc isn鈥檛 the only company trying to exploit genetic engineering in this way. The chemicals giant Monsanto is developing cotton tolerant to glyphosate, the weedkiller it sells as Roundup. Indeed, of all the transgenic crops field tested in OECD countries last year, the largest proportion 鈥� 36 per cent 鈥� were herbicide-tolerant varieties; new crops for old herbicides.
Failed promise?
It isn鈥檛 what most people expected from genetic engineering. Those who believe that chemicals and monocultures should be replaced with biological control and mixed cropping are disappointed 鈥� but hardly surprised, given that the bulk of funding for biotech research comes from large agrochemical and food processing companies. In the 1980s, 鈥済enetic engineering was offered as a technology that would feed the world and allow us to wean ourselves from chemical dependency鈥�, says Margaret Mellon, a senior staff scientist for the Union of Concerned 杏吧原创s. 鈥淭his does not fulfil the promise.鈥�
Nor do most of the other transgenic crops now making their way to the marketplace, which are clearly designed to benefit industrial processors of food and consumers in industrial nations. For example, Calgene鈥檚 Flavr Savr tomato, which this winter went on sale in 730 grocery stores in the US, is engineered to have a better flavour at the end of its extended shelf-life. For the future, Monsanto is developing a low-water, 鈥渜uick-fry鈥� potato with an improved texture.
And what鈥檚 in it for the farmers? In industrialised countries, they will have more options for controlling pests and boosting their crop yields. But that doesn鈥檛 necessarily translate into higher profits 鈥� the farmers will pay more for transgenic seeds and any savings may be passed to consumers, who have benefited from a general decline in food prices since the Second World War.
鈥淔or affluent people, food has never been cheaper; for poor people, access to food has never been more difficult,鈥� says Frederick Buttel, a rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Indeed, in developing countries, farmers may find the price of transgenics just too high. Worse, some could lose critical income as industrialised countries begin to grow genetically engineered crops to replace crops that are at present imported from the South.
The scenario now unfolding hardly approaches the heady excitement of the late 1970s, when genetic engineering first emerged from the confines of a few research laboratories. With genetic engineering, plant breeders would no longer be limited to working with traits that already exist in the genomes of a particular crop and its related species. A desirable trait from a completely unrelated organism could, in theory, be transferred into a plant by direct insertion of the gene. Universities couldn鈥檛 wait to replace their agriculture specialists with biotechnologists while developing countries rushed to establish their own national biotech centres. Genetic engineering opened up tremendous possibilities for developing new plant varieties with built-in defences against pests and diseases.
To date, more than 60 plant species have been genetically engineered and nearly 3000 field tests of transgenic crops have been conducted worldwide. Such crops could boost food production by reducing losses caused by pests and diseases, which still claim one-third of all crops grown, and at the same time reduce the need for pesticides.
In the past two years, a bumper crop of disease-resistance genes have been identified. These may one day be used against bacterial, viral and fungal plant pathogens. For instance, Jonathan Jones of the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich has identified a gene called Cf-9 in tomatoes that helps the plants fight off tomato leaf mould, a disease caused by the fungus Cladosporium fulvum. As with many of these new genes, the protective mechanism of the CF-9 gene has yet to be discovered. But it presumably encodes a protein receptor needed to launch a defensive reponse to the fungus, and as such may one day be used to boost yields of tomatoes grown in hothouses.
At the same time, researchers are steadily advancing their understanding of the genes that play a role in complex traits, such as tolerance to drought, frost and poor soils. If more crops had such qualities, it would be invaluable to those who farm on marginal soils and harsh climates. However, capturing the genetic basis of these traits is complex, as they involve several genes. And it鈥檚 by no means certain that genetic engineering of such multigenic traits 鈥� still at least a decade away 鈥� will beat conventional plant breeding toward this end.
Drought-tolerant plants, for example, need deep roots that can penetrate clay pan, thick leaf cuticles and the ability to make certain adjustments in balancing salt concentrations within cells. 杏吧原创s with the Rockefeller Foundation鈥檚 International Program on Rice Biotechnology are trying to engineer rice with these traits but are having greater success using conventional breeding combined with molecular markers 鈥� sequences of DNA 鈥� which allow them to identify and select those plants with the desired drought-tolerance traits more efficiently (see Diagram).
Upping the yields
The potential is there for engineered crops to take agriculture in a new direction, and even today hopes burn brightly that transgenic crops will provide the solution to the problem of food shortages for a burgeoning human population. With the world鈥檚 population growing at 2 per cent per year and food production increasing at only 1 per cent, how will we cope? The Green Revolution, which allowed wheat and rice yields to climb 4 to 5 per cent every year for several decades, has run out of steam. As Indra Vasil, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville and chair of UNESCO鈥檚 Biotechnology Action Council, says: 鈥淲e need to find some means 鈥� and biotech is one means 鈥� to increase yields. We have to have another revolution, a Gene Revolution, to take care of this.鈥�
Genetically engineered crops are widely touted by biotech companies, aiming to attract investors, as providing the solution to the problem of feeding the world鈥檚 population. But aside from the fact that higher crop yields do not necessarily solve the problem of hunger, true revolutions do not usually begin in corporate boardrooms. For the bulk of research efforts have now moved from university laboratories to big corporations and groups of strategically aligned companies. Worldwide, companies are funding two-thirds of the agricultural biotech research (see Diagram).
Private finance
In the US, the balance tips further toward private industry, which finances three-quarters of research. 鈥淭he major investments going into agricultural biotech are more and more being controlled by the industrialised world and the private sector,鈥� says Randy Barker, an agricultural economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. 鈥淭o a large extent, they control the research agenda and that affects what gets done.鈥�
Consider the kinds of crops companies choose to work on. A handful of crops have received most of the attention so far: cotton, tobacco, maize, potato, soya bean, tomato and canola (rapeseed). Companies are less interested in low-value crops, such as wheat; minor crops, such as melons and carrots; or foods grown primarily in the developing world, such as millet and cassava.
鈥淔rom a business standpoint, there aren鈥檛 very many crops that you can afford to do much research on,鈥� says Stephen Dumford, director of new technology and basic research at Ciba Crop Protection in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is a division of the Swiss chemicals giant Ciba-Geigy Corporation. Maize has been the target of Ciba鈥檚 genetic engineering efforts. Even though the crop is fetching record low prices this year, it is still a good investment, says Dumford, because farmers have to buy new seed every year to maintain the qualities of the hybrid.
While no one is suggesting that companies should ignore the marketplace or forgo profits, what鈥檚 good for business may not always be good for farmers. There鈥檚 stiff competition between agrochemicals companies and as Rob Horsch, crop transformation director at Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri, points out, 鈥淲hen we say it will be more economical for the farmer, we鈥檙e not being altruistic, it鈥檚 so he鈥檒l buy our product instead of someone else鈥檚.鈥� But new products such as herbicide-tolerant cotton aren鈥檛 the only nor the best solutions to farmers鈥� problems. Crop rotation and mixed plantings can also be used to help control weeds, but these types of solutions require changes in cultural attitudes, which cannot be sold like herbicides.
What鈥檚 good for agrochemical business is not necessarily good for economic development in Third World countries, either. For example, Calgene has engineered a variety of canola which contains high amounts of laurate, a fatty acid used in the manufacture of soaps, shampoos and detergents. The traditional sources of laurate are palm kernel and coconut oils, grown in the tropics, and nations in Southeast Asia are the Prime exporters. Soon these countries will lose income they depend upon. Already, contract farmers in Georgia are growing the first commercial transgenic canola crop. After harvesting and then processing the oil, Calgene will deliver laurate to its first customer this spring (see Table).
Moneyspinners
Canola laurate, the Flavr Savr tomato, herbicide-tolerant cotton 鈥� these are disappointing for a technology as promising as genetic engineering. But then it鈥檚 natural that companies will test out the market with crops that are easy to engineer and guaranteed to make money. To be fair, the more noble accomplishments may still be in the coming. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 judge a new technology by what is first out of the pipeline,鈥� says Demetra Vlachos, manager of biotechnology regulatory affairs at Ciba Seeds in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her company hopes that next year it can start marketing a transgenic maize that is resistant to the European corn borer, a serious pest of the crop.
Roger Beachy, co-director of the International Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, is optimistic that companies will soon direct more attention to developing crops resistant to diseases and pests. In 1985, he pioneered techniques for engineering viral resistance in plants. 鈥淐ompanies frequently tell us they鈥檙e interested in what we do, but they鈥檙e reluctant to put money into it,鈥� says Beachy. He believes this will change once the first transgenic crops are shown to be a commercial success.
After all, disease and pest-resistant crops would be popular with farmers. At present, for example, there are no weapons to use against plant viruses such as the cucumber mosaic virus and potato leafroll virus, which affect many species of plants; the only recourse is to kill the insects that transmit the disease. But it is farmers in developing countries, who cannot afford agrochemicals, who would benefit most from sturdier crops. The question is whether it will be affordable (see 鈥楥rop engineering in the developing world鈥�).
The consensus is that transgenic seeds will cost more than standard hybrid seeds but until they hit the market, it鈥檚 hard to predict how much more. 鈥淭he price will be set by the farmers because they have to perceive the value,鈥� says Tim Oliver, a spokesman for Asgrow Seed Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which last month received approval from the US Department of Agriculture to sell transgenic squash seeds. The yellow crookneck squash, engineered by Upjohn Company, is resistant to two viruses that attack it: watermelon mosaic virus 2 and zucchini yellow mosaic virus.
Future farming
Even if the technology can profit today鈥檚 farmers, what about tomorrow鈥檚? Future generations of farmers may find that they鈥檙e paying a high price for something that offers no real advantage over chemical pesticides. Insects and pathogens can adapt to built-in defences as they do to chemicals applied in the field, so transgenic crops will have to be continuously re-engineered.
Indeed, even before the first pest-resistant crops make it to market, insects are emerging that can thwart a promising class of insecticidal toxins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, the genes of which are now being inserted into crops (鈥淭he perils of planting pesticides鈥�, New 杏吧原创, 28 August 1993).
With transgenic crops, future farmers may also face serious weed problems. Because crop plants and related species growing nearby can cross-pollinate, some scientists are concerned that new weeds will evolve more quickly. The genes which give transgenic plants their resistance to diseases, insects and herbicides could eventually be transferred into weeds, giving them an additional survival advantage. For example, researchers have found that cultivated squashes can transfer genes to wild gourd, a weed commonly found among soya beans grown in the southeast of the US. But it鈥檚 not known whether or how fast gene flow would occur in farmers鈥� fields.
Likewise, an experiment by Ann Greene and Richard Allison at Michigan State University in East Lansing reported in Science last year suggests that virus-resistant crops could potentially spur the emergence of new plant viruses. To engineer a plant for virus resistance, researchers insert genes for viral coat proteins. While these genes provide immunity against the effects of viral infection, the Michigan researchers found that new intact, virulent viruses could emerge from recombination with the inserted gene segments in transgenic tobacco plants.
Cultivating transgenic crops over vast acreages is unlikely to be more sustainable than today鈥檚 high-input systems of food production. A real agricultural revolution 鈥� one that would have an impact in Africa, for example 鈥� may not arrive until we give up the view of genetic engineering as a silver bullet to be aimed at every agricultural problem. As early as 1982, the director of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, M. S. Swaminathan, was warning that: 鈥淪olving a problem rather than worshipping the tool should be the goal.鈥� With a silver bullet, after all, it鈥檚 still possible to shoot yourself in the foot.
Crop engineering in the developing world
FARMERS in the developing world, unable to afford agrochemicals, would benefit most from disease and pest-resistant crops. 鈥淥n a small or large scale, the technology will be useful,鈥� says Indra Vasil, chair of UNESCO鈥檚 Biotechnology Action Council. With little cash to spare, however, the question is whether they would be able to afford transgenic seeds.
One solution would be to provide developing countries with the genetic engineering tools they need to create their own transgenic crops. 鈥淚t would be a mistake to retain the technological capacity in the North and ship the products to the South,鈥� says Gary Toenniessen, deputy director of agricultural sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. 鈥淭hat could make the developing world even more dependent on the North than it already is.鈥�
Non-profit organisations and grant-funded university programmes have, in fact, been training researchers from other countries in genetic engineering all along. But would the agrochemical companies, which hold patents on genes, techniques and products, participate in technology transfers? Perhaps.
鈥淭here鈥檚 now a clear recognition among companies that they have to find broad international markets to recover their investments,鈥� says William Lesser, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University and acting executive director of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), which has offices around the world and headquarters in Ithaca, New York, and broker鈥檚 technology transfer agreements.
In 1992 ISAAA forged the first major deal, one in which Monsanto gave Mexican scientists virus-resistance genes for potatoes for introduction into local potato varieties. The agreement was made under the condition that the transgenic potatoes only be sold for consumption in Mexico, where potatoes are a small part of the diet.
鈥淲hat kind of philanthropy is that?鈥� asks Hope Shand, research director of the Rural Advancement Foundation International in Pittsboro, North Carolina. 鈥淲hen you consider the value of exotic germplasm that comes into industrialised countries for no payment, it鈥檚 outrageous.鈥� But Monsanto鈥檚 Horsch explains, 鈥淲ith this project, we were aiming to help the subsistence farmer trying to feed his family 鈥� they don鈥檛 export potatoes, they eat them. We wanted to leave the door open for us to participate in the marketplace with Mexican farmers who are in it for profit.鈥�
That still raises the question of whether the playing field is even, given that big companies in industrialised countries hold the majority of patents on genes, genetic engineering techniques and products. When developing countries have to pay royalties on products made from their own biological resources, Shand calls it 鈥渂iopiracy.鈥� Patent protection for transgenic crops presents a sticky problem that affects researchers and farmers in industrialised countries as well (鈥淩ich pickings for cotton鈥檚 pioneers鈥� New 杏吧原创, 19 February 1994).
While the hot-button issues of intellectual property rights and ownership of genetic resources are far from resolved after a decade of debate, companies and developing countries are tiptoeing into agreements anyway. ISAAA has also brokered an agreement in which Monsanto gave two Kenyan plant biologists the tools and training to engineer potatoes for virus-resistance. Because the Kenyans will use this to combat feathery mottle virus in sweet potatoes, a crop of no commercial interest to the company, Monsanto offered assistance with no strings attached.
Now ISAAA faces the next challenge: a technology transfer for use with a lucrative cash crop. Monsanto is helping Brazil and Zimbabwe to genetically alter local varieties of cotton with the company鈥檚 Bacillus thuringiensis genes that protect against caterpillar pests, but the final terms of the agreement 鈥� whether the company will receive royalties or profit-sharing 鈥� must still be hammered out.