Glenn Ashton (message #23, June 13) raises some relevant points, but it has to be reiterated that such approaches have (so far) failed to meet people's diverse needs (as I discussed in messages #9 and #20). However, following on from the theme that time is not on our side, we must not limit ourselves to a 'one solution fits all' approach, as many different strategies as possible should be under development at the present time, leaving people free to choose the most appropriate solution to local needs in future.
I suspect that transgenic trees will only be suitable for planting in a few highly specific (but important) cases, but that forest biotechnology in general (including the material coming out of breeding programs) will be widely adopted, because of the benefits it offers. The more suitable (and suited) to local needs the material is, the better. Multinational companies (MNCs) clearly need to behave themselves in this arena, but their activities are small compared to the scale of the forestry activity in developing countries, and the problems associated with it.
Perhaps the biggest issue related to MNCs, and the application of forest biotechnology to the needs of developing countries is access to appropriate technology for local programs, and such companies not using intellectual property rights or patents to obstruct progress of the World's poorest people (and least able to pay). This is clearly an ongoing and difficult issue - from the companies point of view too, but one that can be resolved when the will and imagination is there.
A couple of examples of how this may be achieved : Eucalyptus have been grown in Ethiopia for some time (originally introduced for ornamental reasons I gather) and now many people around the capital are dependent upon them for their daily firewood. There is a crying need for faster growing genotypes which burn well i.e. with high lignin - precisely those plants thrown out of the low lignin (for paper) breeding programs. I understand that such plant material is being made available. Also, the Westvaco corporation, I think it was, has had some success with local initiatives for growing its fast-growing conifers genotypes in Southern Africa - whereby local farmers grew the trees and are free to use them for their own needs, with the company buying what it needs from them.
These are some success stories which may point the way forward for co-operation between the ways and means of the developed world, and the needs and resources of the developing world.
Dr Trevor Fenning.
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany.
[email protected]
[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [email protected] For further information on the Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]
-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 5:01 PM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: Sterile trees and clones : 26
Sirkka Immonen (June 5) raised the "terminator" issue. I share the enthusiasm to sterile trees with some earlier contributions (e.g. Rowland Burdon, June 13 ). Fully domesticated trees should allocate their resources to useful things like wood and not waste energy on unneeded, unasked for, uncontrolled and even dangerous reproductive activities. A major goal of breeding is to allocate the resources to where they are valuable for the grower. And as sterility is also a safety device, it seems to be the place to start GE (genetic engineering), even if that may be far from simple. But let the GE show its powerfulness here first. In conventional tree breeding and multiplication, the techniques used may often tend to increase fertility (sort of collateral damage), but GE has the potential to circumvent this. The essence of evolution in nature is reproductive success, so here is an ultimate way in which we can give human-defined goals priority over products derived from evolution. It also makes the divide between the domesticated sterile man-made crop and the undomesticated fertile strict and clear. This seems OK to me on some land.
That few objections appear is probably because GE is more abstract and futuristic for forestry, as it is not yet applied and many applications probably lie in the far future. Some issues may not have passed the stage when scientists - sometimes a bit naively like me above - point at possibilities.
To remove fertility by GE is high tech. Professionals want to appear futuristic and visionary, scientists and executives are eager to see development (or at least to make that impression). Tree breeding training and forest genetic studies often focus on advanced, futuristic, complicated and expensive techniques, which are not adequate for small, badly supported and organisational shaky tree breeding programs with limited tradition and experience. I believe most such programs benefit from fertile trees producing seeds and also serving other functions in the same time (e.g. recruitment population, wood production). The attention to biotechnology draws attention away from the development of more realistic and rewarding low intensive, cheap, low-tech, simple, robust, local, small-scaled, non-fancy seed supply and breeding programs. In theory, high intensity biotechnology and low intensity breeding complements each other and there should be room for both, but in practice much of the brain power and research funding focuses on high tech. This conflict will hit developing countries harder than developed countries. Biotech in forestry is probably the future, but often too far in the future to be of short-term relevance.
Clones:
Most visions about forestry with GE (as well as many other forms of biotechnology) include clonal forestry as an element. Factors connected to legal commercial issues will favour few clones for GE clonal forestry. GE is a considerable added expense. Thus GE is likely to favour use of fewer clones than conventional clonal forestry. GE (in addition to other problems) is likely to increase the same type of possible risk as conventional clonal forestry based on few clones. This argument is somewhat less relevant for agricultural applications (response to Kakoli Ghosh, June 12 and complementing Rowland Burdon, June 13). Programs considering GE may first consider if clonal forestry with few clones is well developed and accepted (like for some Eucalyptus in Brazil). For large programs in developed countries there are possibilities to develop both techniques in parallel, but less so in developing countries.
Dag Lindgren
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
[email protected]
[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [email protected] For further information on the Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]