April 20, 2000 / Far Eastern Economic Review / Lorien Holland/BEIJING
Monsanto has, according to this story, just saved Chen Zhangliang 15 years of work. Chen and other Chinese bioengineers have spent the better part of two decades trying to crack the genetic code of rice, and still had far to go. The U.S company's April 4 announcement that it has not only found the code but also will share its findings means Chinese scientists can fast-forward to the next step: boosting rice harvests to help feed a population that's expected to reach 1.6 billion by mid-century.
As director of China's National Laboratory of Protein Engineering and Plant Genetic Engineering, Chen was cited as saying the new genetic map will allow China to boost rice yields, increase nutrition value and reduce pesticide use. With his nation's resources already stretched by overpopulation -- and agricultural pollution at a record high -- he says the breakthrough couldn't have come at a better time.
"I've been so excited since I found out about the rice genome sequence," says Chen, grinning from ear to ear. "With this kind of information we can move straight to working on genetically modified crops, where the safety risk is far lower than the current risks from pesticide and insecticide poisoning, and yields can be much higher."
Chen's ultra-positive outlook on genetically modified, or GM, crops is backed up all the way to China's top leaders, who have made biotechnology the nation's top scientific research priority under their 863 Key Research Programme. The biotech research budget this year is around three billion renminbi ($361 million), up from one billion renminbi in 1999. There are already more than a dozen domestic institutions engaged in GM research, all vying for thinly spread government funds.
Unlike in the West, where an emotional debate is raging on the side effects of inserting foreign genes into plant matter, opposition in China is, the story says, scant.
In the countryside, there's no hostility to the "wonder crops," and in the cities few people are aware of the global debate over GM food. Only Gao Han, deputy secretary-general of the Association of Chinese Consumers, has publicly called for labelling of all GM content in foods. (The story says he declined to be interviewed for this article.)
For Clive James, founder of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, which works to transfer technology to developing countries, GM's certain benefits -- expanded yields and reduced use of pesticides and insecticides -- far outweigh the possible dangers that preoccupy the developed world. He says exponential population growth means the world will consume twice as much food in the next 50 years as it has in the past 10,000 years, and new technology is vital to boost yields.
In China, GM seed use is growing rapidly, though volumes remain very small -- only 300,000 hectares were planted in 1999, compared with 28.7 million hectares in the United States. China's scientific community is hoping that half of China's fields will be planted with GM crops within 10 years. Because there's a raft of testing restrictions on GM crops, which means it takes at least five years to get approval, China's Ministry of Agriculture has so far officially granted only six commercial licences -- two for tomatoes, two for cotton, one for sweet pepper and one for petunias.
Only one licence has gone to a foreign company, and that's U.S.-based Monsanto, which has been selling bollworm-resistant cotton in China since 1998. Although poor protection of intellectual property, ineffective distribution methods and multiple layers of bureaucracy have depressed profits, the company plans to introduce GM corn in China and is confident the market soon will take off.
According to Charles Martin, Monsanto's vice-president for corporate communication in the Asia-Pacific region, the company decided to make public the rice genome sequence to encourage research into GM crops in the developing world. This would help build interest and demand for the technology in Asia, which produces 92% of the world's rice.
Beijing, for one, is a ready convert. Field tests of a Swiss-developed "golden rice" with added vitamin A are already under way in the central city of Wuhan. And according to industry sources, the China National Rice Research Institute has been awarded the seventh commercial licence -- to sell herbicide-resistant GM rice in Zhejiang province.
(posted without permission)
