HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

Biotechnology and the future of Australian agriculture

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 26 July 2005

Session 3: Reporting back and discussion
Group A: Horticulture
Rapporteur: Dr Sharon Hamill

We had a very diverse and vigorous talk, which is sort of like the horticulture industry itself, because horticulture is a very diverse quality of crops. It has got annual crops, perennials, short-term, long-term, tropical, subtropical, temperate, cold climate, aimed at a lot of different markets and with a lot of different-sized growers.

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Basically, we followed the matrix and went through the pros and cons.

What we thought we could deliver were some immediate benefits and some long-term benefits. And some benefits we are actually delivering now are probably not recognised by the general public.

We can utilise a lot of diverse natural resources in horticulture. This is so in all areas but particularly there is a lot of potential in the tropics. We currently produce and can continue to produce a lot better varieties, considering disease resistance, biodiscovery, value adding and increased yield. I might add that a lot of crops in horticulture don’t have any research in these areas at all, and could have immediate benefits if the funding was to go that way and there was going to be research carried out.

We can deliver stress tolerance, looking at things like frost, drought and salinity, and one of the issues that came up over and over again was the fact that we can select improved varieties faster, by using various biotechnologies in the conventional breeding process.

There are new opportunities, once we implement the biotechnologies, for where the products can be grown. So there are issues such as salinity now – horticulture might able to move into some of these areas – but also climate change and various aspects. So if we can develop these new products that can be grown under different environments, we can actually then also improve the other aspects of the products themselves, so that they can extend their growing seasons, opening new markets.

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But there are also productivity constraints. A lot of our research is reactive research, because it is driven by grower demand on grower strategic plans. And that is where most of us get our funding from. But the growers themselves are constrained because they can often only sell their products to some of the big chain retailers. This is something that is not unique to horticulture but has a very big impact on horticulture.

The other area was that we need to continue to maintain and work in multidisciplinary teams. There are sometimes people working in isolation – maybe just in breeding, maybe just in biotechnology – where it really needs to have ecology, environment, plant physiology, the whole gamut. The whole range of conventional tools are needed to actually deliver these products.

There also needs to be a connection between the field and the lab, because increasingly people are working away in isolation in laboratories and we are actually [inaudible] of selections, because we might be constrained by nurseries, but ultimately growers who can’t then sell the products to the retail chains. So they are still not really looking ahead in a lot of areas, as far as this end product use goes.

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We can deliver on a lot of environmental benefits. We can produce plants that require less chemical input, so there is less pesticide/fungicide use. By improving the whole plant itself, you might be able to have better uptake of fertilisers, so you reduce that input as well. So ultimately horticulture has demonstrated, actually, in the last few decades that we can increase our yields for less inputs, and this can continue, particularly since it hasn’t actually been applied to quite a few crops.

We have improved biosecurity, which is actually restricting the movement of pests and diseases, not only internationally but also domestically. We improve our stress tolerance, not only so that plants can be grown in marginal areas but also so as not to contribute to problems of salinity as such.

We didn’t really know whether one area was a benefit or a constraint. The fact is that we have a lot of isolated field sites in Australia, so we might be able to use them for better evaluation of some of our emerging products.

Ultimately, we can produce more efficient production with less wastage, which is also better for the environment. Increased biodiversity is one big plus for horticulture as well, which is also good for the environment.

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As we were talking through this horticulture think tank, we realised that GMOs are not our main emphasis. It is working along in the background and will be a future aim, but we have a lot to deliver right now. However, we still considered that ultimately we will be moving to GMOs and the risk of gene escape is going to be one of the issues that have to be addressed.

The other thing is that if we do develop these plants that are able to grow under saline conditions, with drought tolerance and all the rest of it, there is a danger that we will start to produce them in environments that will become damaged because they were just too fragile, really, for us to use for these plants. The other danger is that we can improve our plants to such an extent that possibly, if they were left unchecked, they could become weeds. And even though we can reduce water use, in some fragile environments we still require water use, and that might damage the environment.

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In the value chain there are many improved qualities – nutrition, appearance, flavour and shelf life – that we can put into horticultural products. We can increase the diversity of products even more. We currently can do this using low-level biotechnology, because we have an untapped wealth of diversity out there now. For many of our conventional plants, there is a huge range and potential of different products that have different qualities for taste/flavour, storage, nutritional benefits, out there right now. There is a means by which the consumers can be given self-indicating optimum times, so that when they do purchase our fruit or vegetables they will be able to eat them when they are just perfect, and so they will be more inclined to keep purchasing them. That brings more health benefits, too.

We can also produce ‘clean and green’, eco-friendly. This is good for the environment but it is also good for the consumer, because there is a lot of public perception out there that people want lower pesticide use, lower fungicide use, environmentally friendly – and that is the thing they target.

There is also the potential for new products. The tropical area, especially, is untapped. We can actually do biodiscovery, we can improve products that can’t be stored properly now, and we can expand markets – maybe domestically, but there is a huge potential internationally.

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But constraints: I go back to this common area, that there is a lack of communication between the researchers and the retailers. That is because, I suppose, in some ways the growers that fund a lot of this research are constrained by their retailers. So we really need to improve that process, and get retailers, wholesalers, growers more involved in the whole process and ownership.

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Social values: the ultimate aim of our horticultural products is for the consumer. And a lot of it is to do with eating and also public perception. We can produce better quality production methods and environmental solutions in the long term, but even against public opinion. This is what we were talking about before, that we might have to actually continue to work on something that might be a GMO, even though the public perception is against it, because in the long term it might have all of those benefits that are needed in 15 to 20 years’ time. I guess the problem there is actually getting the funding to continue that long-term challenge.

Also, a lot of the horticultural industries are quite small, and they are very important in rural communities. So it has got a lot of impact in the rural communities and economies.

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The constraints? As I said, we still need to work along with GMOs in the future, but currently it is such things as edible foods as biofactories as well. They probably would raise a bit of a problem with the consumer. And that is just raising the point that there is a lot of resistance to the GMOs, and we probably can move forward right now in parallel with GMO research.

There is a disconnection between consumers and agriculture and science, so we need to improve this whole relationship and increase our community engagement.

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Horticulture is very diverse, as I have mentioned, across a wide range of environments. We have a lot of available biotechnology now that has not been applied. The diversity in Australia offers great potential for development of new products and biodiscovery, particularly in the tropics. And the tropics also offers benefits in tropical production, land, water, low population and reduced pest and disease.

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We really need to develop our technologies. One point we wanted to make is that biotechnology should not be thought of as just GMO. The constraints to do with technology and regulation are actually constraining our way to move forward with our breeding. We need to develop biotechnology tools that can assist our conventional breeding. Molecular markers and quantitative genetics are lacking greatly in horticulture, and things like a non-GM technique for knockout would just allow us to leap forward.

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There is a lack of funding. Funding is needed for strategic research as well as reactive research. Many different industries with different groups make decisions all the time, which makes for a very fragmented approach – we can’t actually jump from one horticultural industry to the other. And we do need integrated industries, more than just the biotechnology, as I said. Some of the more traditional skills are falling away.

Discussion

Chair – One of the advantages, I think, in many of the horticultural crops is that they are vegetatively reproduced. The half-life to a new variety is often much shorter than in the wider agricultural crops. This can be an advantage, whether it is transgenic or not.

Sharon Hamill – Yes. That has been applied in many horticultural crops, but in many it could be applied.

Chair – You brought up the concept of needing to have the retailers and other people involved. The trouble is that the retailers like to be involved as long as they don’t have to put up any money! So I think that to be effective in that way – and I agree with you, it would be good – we have to also work on the culture of being willing to help investments to achieve certain ends.

Question – This is just a quick question. I know Steve Swain brought this out this morning, but to what extent did your group address speed to market, and productivity – cost effectiveness – in the future, in your products?

Sharon Hamill – We didn’t really directly address those two topics. We do realise that horticulture is a very long-term process from initial conception to the final product, and so we did see that as a constraint. That was one of the major constraints, actually, in trying to get the sustained funding. So we addressed that point of it, and then that was followed up by the fact that we can come up with those products and then still not get them into the marketplace.

We didn’t really work too much towards the costing of the inputs to the production, but the fact is that we are reducing labour costs and fertilisers, and increasing our yields.