ANALYSIS-As climate change hits crops, debate heats up over use of plant gene data
08/11/2019
ROME, Nov 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rich and poor countries are at loggerheads over how to share benefits from genetic plant data that could help breed crops better able to withstand climate change, as negotiations to revise a global treaty are set to resume in Rome on Monday.
The little-known agreement is seen as crucial for agricultural research and development on a planet suffering rising hunger, malnutrition and the impacts of climate change.
"We need all the 'genetics' around the world to be able to breed crops that will adapt to global warming," said Sylvain Aubry, a plant biologist who advises the Swiss government.
Rising temperatures, water shortages and creeping deserts could reduce both the quantity and quality of food production, including staple crops such as wheat and rice, scientists have warned.
The debate over "digital sequence information" (DSI) has erupted as the cost of sequencing genomes falls, boosting the availability of genetic plant data, Aubry said.
"A lot of modern crop breeding relies on these data today," he added.
At the same time, the capability of machines to process vast amounts of that data to identify special crop traits such as disease resistance or heat tolerance has grown.
Pierre du Plessis, an African technical advisor on treaty issues, said companies and breeders can use DSI to identify the genetic sequence of a desired plant trait and send it by e-mail to a gene foundry that prints and mails back a strand of DNA.