[For further information on the Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see the Forum website.
Note, participants are assumed to be speaking on their own behalf, unless they state otherwise.]

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: 30 March 2007 10:05
To: 'biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: 70: Biotech tools vs. conventional breeding for efficiency of water use

I am Xavier Rakotonjanahary, plant breeder at the National Center of Applied Research for Rural Development, Madagascar. First, I would like to thank the FAO for organizing this conference and the participants for their valuable information and exchange of experiences about agricultural biotechnologies coping with growing water scarcity.

To respond to the important question 'How important are biotechnology tools compared to conventional breeding for improving the efficiency of water use in crops in developing countries?', my overall view is that agricultural biotechnologies are more efficient than conventional breeding because they are faster and some of them can detect variability which was not revealed by conventional breeding. As stated by Manikanda Boopathi (message 2), it is thought that most genes involved in a particular pathway reside in one location and that allows identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) and to use mapping approach. So, biotechnology tools should be applied, even routinely applied in developing countries for increasing agricultural productivity, mainly for the dry or drought prone areas. With conventional breeding alone and with a fast growing population, there is very restricted issue and less chance to overcome food insufficiency and poverty.

Which biotechnology tools have greatest potential for improving the efficiency of water use in crops in developing countries? Many solutions and alternatives were given in the previous messages to mitigate drought effect by plant adaptation and to maximize water use efficiency in better ways. According to the present available information and expertise, marker assisted selection (MAS) and QTL tools seem to have greatest potential for improving the efficiency of water use in crops. However, as it was stated in many messages, drought tolerance is a very complex trait and application of MAS in developing countries has many bottlenecks, both in scientific process such as selection of the best segments to be used in MAS (Manikanda Boopathi, Message 2) and on practical level such as the costs, infrastructure and expertise (Mojisola Edema, Message 43). Even, it was reported that not much success has been achieved in developing drought tolerant rice cultivars through MAS since most QTL detection software can only be used in populations developed from two parents (Baboucarr Manneh, Message 40). And last but not least, public funds for molecular techniques in developing countries are not available because these are not a research priority area and the private sector is not interested to financially support research activities.

Regarding the message on mutagenesis (Hubert Dulieu, Message 55), mutation breeding could result in drought resistant lines. We are working on rice, on groundnut and bambaranut, this latter being a neglected crop, with the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Induction and enlargement of variability is usually obtained by gamma irradiation; then, new genotypes of rice are currently obtained by use of anther culture. Drought tolerant genotypes are then identified by screening with low cost techniques, e.g. plantlet or root box screening by visual recording on morphological and physiological traits.

Hybrid vigour in crops by use of hybrid lines or hybrid seeds is equally an alternative which should not be forgotten for improving the efficiency of water use.

Xavier Rakotonjanahary
Plant breeder and Rice breeding coordinator
National Center of Applied Research for Rural Development
BP1690, Antananarivo 101,
Madagascar
e-mail: r.xavier (at) simicro.mg

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: 30 March 2007 17:19
To: 'biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: 71: The water issue and possible roles for agbiotech

This overview is from Denis Murphy, Head of Biotechnology Unit, University of Glamorgan, UK and an international agricultural advisor/consultant specializing in oil crops (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114188082/ABSTRACT).

To my mind the water issue and the possible roles for agbiotech are some of the most serious challenges that agriculture will face over the next 50 years. I have recently researched these topics in some depth for two books respectively on modern biotechnology and the history of crops and human societies. (Plant Breeding and Biotechnology: Societal Context and the Future of Agriculture, Cambridge University Press, UK, http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521823890; and People, Plants, and Genes: The Story of Crops and Humanity, Oxford University Press, http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199207145).

Firstly, it is important to stress that water availability is at the heart of the evolution of agriculture. The first cereal crops were domesticated in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant about 11,000 years ago under rainfed conditions and for over 3,000 years farming was only possible above 200-300-millimetre isohyet and was not highly productive. The major breakthrough came after about 8000 years Before Present (BP) when the Samarrans and their neighbours invented crop irrigation which led to the settlement of southern Mesopotamia, the cultivation of higher yielding crops, and the foundation of the first agro-urban cultures in Sumer by 5000BP. Similar sequences of events occurred in east/south Asia, Africa and the Americas. Throughout the history of agriculture, episodes of aridification have had devastating effects on civilisations, from the Maya in Yucatan to the Harappans of the Indus Valley. [An isohyet is a line joining areas of equal rainfall on a map...Moderator].

The challenges we face today are therefore nothing new, except that there are about 20-times more people today than in Mayan times and, if anything, our highly complex technological, urbanised cultures are even more fragile in the face of environmental change than those of our ancestors. The one advantage that we have is our vastly increased scientific knowledge of crop breeding and agronomy, including agricultural management in the broadest sense. The wise and selective application of such knowledge will largely determine whether our agricultural systems can weather future episodes of widespread and prolonged aridity.

Today, only about 20% of farmland is irrigated, but this provides 40% of our global food supply. It is estimated that by 2050, as much as two-thirds of the global population will live in water scarce areas (Wallace, 2000). One of the major future challenges will be to maintain the supply of water to agriculture in the face of depleted groundwater supplies, increasing salinisation, alterations in river flow, and changing rainfall patterns across the world. During the next few decades, population growth will probably continue to level off, possibly reaching about nine billion by 2050. The prognosis for the capacity of agriculture to feed this additional 40% of people is cautiously optimistic. The major unknown is the magnitude and effect on crop productivity of short-medium term climate change associated mainly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, which are predicted to increase global temperatures and alter rainfall patterns. Warmer weather and higher CO2 levels might even favour higher crop yields, although localised aridification due to reduced rainfall could severely affect output in affected regions. Therefore, the overall effect of short-term CO2–related climate change on global agriculture will largely depend on whether any of the key producer regions, such as Chinese rice-growing areas or the US Midwest, suffers serious and sustained drought.

The key issue of water scarcity in agriculture has been highlighted in a recent report from the International Water Management Institute (2006). Increasing aridification of cropland will probably occur in the short-medium-term due to a combination of human and climatic factors, including population increases in regions of water deficit as noted by Wallace, 2000; Pereira et al, 2006. So it seems that in both the short-medium-term and the long-term, by far the most serious threat to food production will come from aridification, rather than temperature change.

We should therefore prepare ourselves for more arid climates in the future. We can do this by developing new food resources, including newly domesticated crops and genetically improved cultivars of existing crops that can tolerate a wider range of climates than we have experienced hitherto. Our present methods of genetic engineering are still too primitive to contribute significantly in this direction. This is mainly because traits like drought tolerance are highly complex and regulated by many genes, which makes it difficult to manipulate them by the kinds of simple transgenic approaches in use today. However, other high-tech methods like marker-assisted selection may enable us to develop new such crops in the next few decades. (The prospects for high-tech genomic approaches to improve breeding for drought tolerance are reviewed by Tuberosa and Salvi (2006), who append this important caveat: "Harnessing the full potential of genomics-assisted breeding will require a multidisciplinary approach and an integrated knowledge of the molecular and physiological processes influencing tolerance to drought."). Given the rapid progress of research over the past few years, it cannot be ruled out that radical forms of genetic engineering will be invented during the present century but they are not necessarily imminent.

One further drawback of most transgenic technologies is their ownership by the private sector, which can seriously limit public-good applications. Here there is potentially good news with the development of ‘open access technologies’ (such as transgenesis) that are owned by the global commons. One example is CAMBIA, which states that: "Our institutional ethos is built around an awareness of the need and opportunity for local commitment to achieving lasting solutions to food security, agricultural, public health and environmental problems. We envision a situation in which the broadest community of researchers and farmers are empowered with dramatic new technologies to become innovators in developing their own solutions to the challenges they face - solutions for which they feel ownership." (http://www.cambia.org/daisy/cambia/about_cambia/590.html).

But in the meantime, we should focus the scarce resources of bodies like the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) on the proven approaches of conventional breeding, supplemented by all available modern technologies providing the latter are both appropriate and cost effective for the crop/region in question.

Denis Murphy,
Biotechnology Unit,
Division of Biology,
University of Glamorgan,
Treforest CF37 1DL,
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 1443 483747, Fax: +44 1443 482285
e-mail: dmurphy2 (at) glam.ac.uk