April 25, 2000 / The New York Times / Andrew Pollack
Dr. Wayne W. Hanna has, for 20 years, according to this story bred new millet plants and combs the fields for a plant that will reproduce asexually, so that its seeds will grow into exact genetic copies, or clones, of the parent. This process, called apomixis, occurs naturally in hundreds of plants, including dandelions, crab apples, citrus, blackberries and the grass used on many lawns. In other cases, farmers can achieve asexual reproduction by grafting, as is done with grape vines, or by vegetative propagation, as when a piece of potato is planted and grows into a new plant. But the world's major food grains do not reproduce asexually. If they could, some scientists say, it would greatly simplify crop breeding. A high-yielding corn, wheat or rice plant could reproduce itself unchanged for generations.
Dr. Hanna, a research geneticist for the United States Department of Agriculture in Tifton, Ga., was quoted as saying, "We've searched thousands of plants to find the one we want."
So far, he has not found it. Nor has anyone else found what a small but growing number of pursuers describe as the holy grail of agriculture. But when they do find it, Dr. Hanna says, it will promise a "revolution" in world food production.
Dr. David M. Stelly, a professor of soil and crop sciences at Texas A&M University, was quoted as saying, "Once this occurs, the ramifications could well dwarf the green revolution in terms of its impact."
But apomixis could also represent a threat to the seed companies, changing the balance of power between the companies and farmers. It is thus, the story says, being swept up in the worldwide controversy over agricultural biotechnology. Right now high yields are obtained using hybrids, which are crosses between two different varieties. But hybrids, which display a somewhat mysterious "hybrid vigor," take years of painstaking, costly breeding to develop. Moreover, because crops reproduce sexually, the children of hybrids vary in their characteristics and generally do not retain the high yield of the parent. So farmers cannot save the seed from one year's crop to plant the next, but must buy new seeds every year, providing seed companies with recurring income.
Apomixis would greatly simplify development of hybrids, putting them within reach of developing countries, which most need the higher food output but which now generally cannot afford it. With apomictic hybrids, seed could be saved and planted the next year without loss of yield. And a farmer obtaining a few such seeds could reproduce and multiply them, just as it is possible to make numerous perfect copies of a software program.
Dr. Michael Freeling, a professor of genetics at the University of California at Berkeley, was quoted as saying, "This is a way for local farmers to take control of their seeds. It puts the seed companies out of business." Indeed, apomixis is being championed by some in the developing world as the antidote to the controversial "terminator" technology, an experimental method of making plants infertile so that farmers have to buy new seeds every year.
Dr. Stephen L. Goldman, a professor of biology at the University of Toledo, who is working to create apomictic corn, was quoted as saying, "It's the challenger to the terminator technology. It has enormous political implications." In fact, worried that a big seed company could patent apomixis technology and deny access to the rest of the world, apomixis researchers meeting in Bellagio, Italy, in 1998 issued a declaration calling for "broad and equitable access to plant biotechnologies, especially apomixis technology."
Dr. Tony Cavalieri, director of research for Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the nation's largest seed company, was cited as playing down the threat to seed companies, adding, "Most of the people who buy our seeds are interested in the newest hybrids. They're not interested in planting the same hybrids for 20 years." Indeed, he and others said, apomixis could help seed companies by speeding up plant breeding. Some experts worry that apomixis technology could lead to more uniformity in crops, which would make them more susceptible to being wiped out by a disease or pest. But others counter that because of the ease of creating hybrids with apomixis, crop variability could actually be increased.
The story says that until recently seed companies viewed apomixis as a distant and uncertain prospect, but now they are starting to take notice, in part because sophisticated gene-hunting technologies might finally allow scientists to understand how the process works.
(posted without permission)
