HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

Biotechnology and the future of Australian agriculture

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 26 July 2005

General discussion 1
Chair: Dr Jim Peacock

Chair – Would the chairs of the different breakout groups like to add anything at all to what your rapporteurs have said – maybe something that has come to you since we had the earlier discussion?

Snow Barlow (Chair, Group A: Horticulture) – Horticulture is always a very broad topic, and there were a lot of parts to our discussion. But there are a couple of points that might be of use for our next discussion.

The first is whether there is a place, when we consider biotechnology here, for the development of what you might call 'platform technologies'. One of the things that we were thinking of, with our particular problem in horticulture, is that you do have long generation times if you are actually breeding. If you are looking at vegetative production you can shorten that. But we have got a lot of perennial plants, slowly maturing woody plants. Are there ways not only to speed up the breeding technology but also to speed up, perhaps, the background genetics of those species where you have got a diverse range of species, as you have in horticulture, often with poorly known genetics? You need a background in genetics before you could even start to breed or look at where you might move, in terms of injecting things in. Are there technologies that people could work on to decrease that generation time, to make it much shorter, and therefore give you a specific advantage?

The second thing that we perhaps didn't bring out in terms of the potential in horticulture is that we thought there were two key features, one at the production end and one at the market chain end. At the production end was the water issue, which I think people know very well. If you are talking about irrigated areas, ultimately the high value use for Australia's consumptive use of irrigation water lies in the horticultural industry. That is a production advantage that can only be, in fact, captured when the markets and the products actually catch up with the potential that is there.

At the market chain end, horticultural products enter the market as a separate entity, so there is a chance of brand and product differentiation that is perhaps not there in the commodities. If you produce flour, it goes into the market as a bulk commodity. Even meat, while it sometimes gets differentiated, is not completely differentiated. But a new apple, a new pawpaw – especially if it has some health benefits – is already branded, so you can differentiate and actually capture value moving into the market.

We saw those as strategic advantages if they could be captured in terms of the health benefits but also aesthetic benefits and production benefits as well.

Chair – When Steve Swain talked, hidden away on one of his slides was a picture of some sultanas that were a beautiful golden light brown. They were produced by inhibiting the action of PPO. I was present when these things were unveiled to the producers who were paying for that research, and their reaction was just wonderful to see. They had never seen such quality. The colour in sultanas, I'm sure you all would know, is largely related to light colour, and even though the Australian industry is being put under enormous pressure by cheaper products from Turkey – which are dark brown and not particularly good quality – our industry felt that in no way could they risk trying to enter these transgenic sultanas onto the market yet. So determining the right aesthetics, the right quality, but for acceptance at the right time, is a hard thing to do in horticulture.

Question – With regard to the platform of the technologies that would have multiple use, I think one of the issues of bottlenecks that was mentioned by several groups, particularly in crops, is the difficulty of breeding multiple traits at the same time, and maybe the problem of the large population required. Most of it boils down to limited recombination when you perform crosses. So one area of research which is actually at the moment not very well addressed would be an attempt to increase the recombination frequency in traditional breeding, using novel methodology.

Obviously, once that is done, you want to remove the promoter of that increased recombination so that your crop is stable, but that is a whole area of research which probably would deserve attention and would be widely applicable.

Chair – One platform technology that is within reach, I think, is genome sequencing. Mail order genome sequence is virtually here now. It doesn't cost too much now to have a complete genome sequenced.

Snow Barlow – One riposte, Jim, with regard to the difficulties of marketing GMOs – that's really what the sultana story is – is that we wondered in the horticulture group whether what we have is, in classic terms, a threat or an opportunity. The longer time due to the generation times, one could say, is a disadvantage, but on the other hand we might hope that if we embarked on some journey which involved some sort of GMOs that might emerge at the other end, in the full knowledge that everyone would have done their job, then by the time it did come up at the other end the situation could be a hell of a lot better. So, in fact, if you take the optimist's approach, it's an opportunity.

Stephen Tyerman (Chair, Group B: Crops) – This is not actually a point that came out of our discussion but it is something that I have thought about, listening to the reports. Nobody has really addressed the issue of biotechnology in value adding, and particularly the use of GM in that value-adding process. An obvious example is the beverage industry, and wine production. We can probably make low alcohol wine within a couple of years, using GM modified yeasts; we don't have to do anything to the grapevine. There are probably other examples of that in agriculture in value adding – soybean et cetera – which is probably where we need to focus our attention.

Sue Forrest (Chair, Group E: Pharming/new products) – I have just a couple of additional points that came up in our group. One was the people factor. Working out mechanisms to recognise the success and great ideas of the groups of people working in particular areas is important to address.

Another little debate we had was what actually constitutes value in the value chain. Again we thought that was an educational scenario, where scientists needed to understand what was meant by 'value' by the consumer and the producer: at some times two-fold value in one stage of the pipeline might be enough, and 100-fold might be needed at others. That was a knowledge gap that we thought needed to be filled.

Looking also at the overall area, we again thought that a proposal for how pharming could be structured within the country was essential, because there are some areas of high value in concentrated geographical sites that need to be sited well away from non-GMO foods, and it needs to be an integrated approach that's clearly lacking at present.

Chair – I would just pick up someone's comment on the use of terms, that 'biotechnology' is used to cover a whole lot of different technologies and disciplines, whether or not that is a good thing. Perhaps Craig Cormick could make some comment on perceptions of the use of words – 'genetic engineering' versus 'biotechnology' versus 'genetic modifications' and so on.

Craig Cormick – We have done a lot of surveying of the public, and you will find that the different interest groups do prefer different terms, because they do have different emotive contexts. 'Biotechnology' tends to be fairly neutral; 'genetically modified' tends to be a tad more positive than 'genetically engineered'. And so the anti groups will very strongly use the term 'genetically engineered', government types will use 'genetically modified' and the Americans have a term 'genetically improved' that they will push for.

Interestingly, if you do a Google search by typing in 'genetically modified', almost all the hits you will find are for government. If you type in 'genetically engineered', almost all the hits will be for anti-GE groups. So what school kids are using for their research, what the general public are using, is also very important, because that will influence the way the facts will be presented to them. What terminology you do use will make a big difference in how it is perceived.

Chair – And it is often thought, for example, that biotechnology means transgenic, it means new proteins, and so on. But, so frequently, it doesn't mean that at all. The RNAi technology which you would have heard about is a natural mechanism, just directed against one particular gene already existing. Maybe a harmful product from that gene is stopped, without the production of any new protein whatsoever. These things aren't really talked about and distinguished in the general discussions.

Question – I think as scientists we are just as much to blame. Before I came here I looked up the definition of biotechnology, and it didn't mention just GM. If we listen to the talks here today, taking the animal and the plant sectors, we realise that the plant sectors took biotechnology as GM in most of their talks, whereas the animal sector did exactly the opposite and tried to distance themselves. So I think as scientists ourselves we have to watch how we use the wording of these things.

Chair – I think that has got something to do with the separation of the germ plasm and totipotency of cells, et cetera.

Question – I would make two quick comments. The first one is in relation to seeing ourselves as part of a global marketplace. We are a very small country in terms of our population base, and if our technologies are going to be commercially self-sustaining in the long term we have got to very much think of that pull, as opposed to push – that pull from the international marketplace, and positioning ourselves in terms of global partnering. I'm not sure if that was brought out quite so much.

The other thing is that there was very good discussion on non-GM applications of biotechnology. I don't know if we have stressed enough in the crops, at least – I think the horticulture people had the best ideas here – the whole issue of speed to market, improved breeding efficiency, accumulation of favourable genes and traits. I think that needs to be brought out more strongly.

And, just as an aside, the wheat program that is taking 20 years to develop a variety in this day and age – whoever that might be – should be closed down.

Question – I am not sure this is the appropriate time for this speculation, but the thought has crossed my mind a couple of times that we may be constraining our discussion or our thoughts somewhat. We are really talking about technologies where in many cases the delivery – sorry about this – will be 10 or 15 years off in the future, and yet we are kind of talking in terms of an economic framework of today, without asking ourselves the speculative question, 'What will the economic framework of not only agriculture but, if you like, the Australian landscape look like at some time in the future?'

Very clearly we are already starting to put dollar figures on environmental impacts, just as an example. If we do that, then they are probably some of the biggest dollar sums we are going to see where this group could have an influence. I'm treading on dangerous ground to choose an example but I'll do it anyway. We could speculate about the use of plants in terms of salinity control in some areas of Australia. The dollar value you would put on that is enormous. Is there a contribution that biotech can make to that, whether it is in selection or whether it is actually in transgenics? That may actually be a bigger economic impact than any industry we are likely to address.

Chair – I think that's a very good point. And the wider benefits from the industries out into their regions, just general economic advantage, are something we never really talk about enough, either.

Paul Donnelly (Chair, Group C: Livestock) – My first point is in relation to Peter Willadsen's comments about the life cycle of product development. Some areas of breeding, using the new snp typing platforms and compressed generation cycles, would indicate to us that Ian Edwards's suggestion that much faster life cycles are going to come upon us very soon is right. And so I think there will be a whole spread of opportunities from biotechnology with very fast turn-around times.

The other point reverts to the killer app angle, from a more positive aspect. It is quite clear that there is a rapidly increasing incidence of allergenicity out there for some reason or other, and greatly increased frequency of peanut allergy in the population at large. No-one seems to know the cause of this, but I think there is an opportunity for research in the whole biomedical area, possibly tying in with agricultural applications, to put a lot of focus on this area and address it, because clearly it is a major source of societal anxiety.

Chair – Yes, and allergenicity and allergenic compounds in plants are successfully detected – at some times, and mostly, I think. Whether it is through conventional breeding programs or transgenic breeding programs, there's no real difference. And there are more examples of programs being stopped and so on in the conventional breeding than there are in transgenics. I only know of one in a transgenic program. It's not restricted to plants, either, of course. I think you have made a good point. The molecular basics of even complex allergens like the proteins of the wheat grain, for coeliacs, are being explored now, and there will ultimately, I think, be real hope that they can be removed. That particular widespread problem in a major staple food of the world may well be able to be removed.

Question – I just want to ask a little bit about the issue of pull-marketing versus push-marketing. I was interested to see the suggestion for push marketing. It reminded me of something that came up in our group, where somebody asked about whether we should be focusing on products that would help, perhaps, obesity and other health problems. It seems to me that mostly we are talking about using biotechnology to make existing things better, cheaper, bigger. But we didn't really focus on coming up with totally unique products which would lend themselves to push-marketing, and perhaps get away from the bogey factor.

People wouldn't be concerned about getting something that they are used to and being scared that it's been 'GM'ed; they'd be getting something totally new. So, for example, on the obesity front, should we be looking at coming up with products that have no nutritional value whatsoever but are great to eat? Then, of course, we would be under the obligation to couple that with push-marketing. You can't do it independently. So I was just wondering whether there were any groups talking about unique kinds of products.

Chair – I think some cynics would say there's quite a lot of that in the fast food market!

Question – A couple of things that came up in our discussion on horticulture were that there seemed to be a bit of public distrust, maybe, of scientists – or a lack of communication, perhaps, between the scientists and the consumers to ensure that the products that were being developed were actually what people wanted. I was just wondering how to address this communication issue and not compromise IP, because I know that a lot of funding goes into these development projects.

Chair – I thought you were going to give an answer!

Question (continued) – No, I was just curious.

Chair – Well, it's a very difficult area. I think it will be one of the general things that are picked up in the next session.