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 B: Crops
Rapporteur: Dr Barry Pogson
We tried to cover big-picture things but also come down to some specifics.
In essence, how I will present this summary of our group’s meeting is under four different topics. One is the area of high throughput breeding, the second is which crops and which traits, the third is community attitudes to biotechnology, and GM in particular, and the fourth is potential areas for investment in the country.
A summary of what we wanted was more, bigger, faster and better.
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Getting through to the first problem: ours was a group where we had a strong interest at what I will call the coal face. We had breeders, we had people from GRDC and the other grains research organisations, people who were dealing with the real problems of trying to integrate a wealth of knowledge that is coming out of all these genome programs and hundreds of years of classical breeding, into the species they are trying to put into the marketplace today.
Marker-assisted breeding is assisting this, but how to breed for multiple traits simultaneously is becoming a limiting step for them. And similarly in GM, as you heard this morning from Jeff Ellis, gene stacking is now an issue to enable you get not just one trait done but four at a time. Thirty genes, with two alleles, is 10 billion options.
In wheat we have got a lot more than 30 genes. In all the crops we’ve got a lot more than 30 genes. And we’re dealing with triploid organisms as well, not just simple diploid genetics.
So we need higher populations as one of our solutions. We need ways of growing and screening for more systematically.
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We need better ways to integrate into the breeding cycle knowledge. Our big limitation is what is broadly being accepted now as the latest buzzword in genomics, ‘systems biology’, going through from the mathematical modelling, as we heard mentioned this morning, to the genome sequences and the actual life cycle – what is going on in that cell, how can what is going on in that cell be used to predict function in the plant as a whole – so we can start to predict and actually know what we are breeding for.
There are many examples of problems out there. If you breed for something, for instance, in abiotic stress tolerance, will you have a negative or positive on biotic stress tolerance? These are two very simple processes, where we actually have a fair bit of knowledge on how they are linked, but we still couldn’t accurately predict easily what we need to know.
So we need to better understand networks – gene networks and cell networks. One of the best examples I have seen is to picture a map of the Sydney underground, or the London Underground, if you really want to get complex. There are multiple routes into any one station, there are key points where stations intersect and different pathways go off and reconverge. We need to find the control points, and we need to know sometimes that control point is going to have a positive effect on that network and a negative effect on that network.
For that, we need a better integration of genome research into the breeding programs, we need a better interface of the genome-phenome research. This includes things like developing phenomics facilities for analysis of crops, so that we can start to more quickly and non-invasively assess traits as the breeder goes through larger-scale populations. We need to do it more quickly and on a better scale.
We need also to develop new technologies – rapid, non-invasive measurements of gene function. The example that was given was transient gene technology, where we can literally do very quick experiments without having to go through two to three generations of creating a transgenic plant, to assess that gene’s function. And I am sure that there will be other technologies we have to consider for that.
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The next problem that we spent a lot of time on was: which crops and which traits? The wheat industry, as not all of you may be aware, is going to be facing dramatic competition over the next 20 years as areas of Asia and the Black Sea area come on line and really start to compete with us in the wheat market. It seemed that literally some questions have been asked as to whether we should continue to invest markedly in wheat for the next 20 years. To that extent, that is an issue for us to consider as a country.
The length of breeding times is also a major problem for us. The example given was 9 years for cotton, whether it is by conventional breeding or gene technology, to get a new variety to the market. And 20 years was the number we were given for wheat. Then, given that length of breeding time, our need to predict the right targets to focus on becomes an issue.
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As opposed to Alan Finkel telling us we should look at what we are concentrating on and what we should focus on, we basically gutsed out and said we need diversity. And within that I think that was partly a scientist’s view of how to manage things: when in doubt, get more knowledge and be diverse. But I also think it is a reality. As a country, we do need diversity in our crops and where we’re going to in the future.
I think we need to continue to invest in conventional crops such as wheat; we need to develop new niche markets and new crops. Niche markets will include things like specific cultivars of wheat, like the noodle wheats and high-value crops. It could also include more diversification into pasture crops and everything like that. But, within that, there are guaranteed problems we can identify, there are guaranteed traits we can select for. So we can at least start to select for some things, as Alan Finkel would want us to. Areas such as high CO2 and the increasing problems of drought and climate change are things we can predict for in our breeding programs, and they should be considered. (I will come back to some more of those, towards the end.)
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The community attitude to GM was a major area of discussion in our group. There was broad acceptance of the points raised by Craig Cormick, plus some more specific things we focused on a bit more as a group: the consumer distrust of the scientific process and a feeling that it’s problems from the past that are impacting on us for the future. And in that sense, there has been a lack of engagement and consideration in the aspects of planning. Also, we have a community that is becoming increasingly risk averse.
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Some of the solutions we considered: one was better integration of ethics and social issues into regulatory authorities’ decisions. This came with some caveats among those within the group who felt that we should be primarily science-based on the planning of regulatory authorities, while others felt strongly that ethics and social issues needed to come more into it.
A strong area of acceptance was engagement with the community in planning, getting the community to ‘buy in’ to the change, getting them to start to realise what are the potential problems, what is the cost-benefit analysis of going down a completely non-GM route versus a GM route, what is the cost-benefit analysis of different technologies. And then, if the community has been engaged in the process, they are more likely to accept it.
There was a feeling that there should be broader representation of not just the community but scientists in things like the Gene Technology Regulator. Scientific disciplines such as ecology may have been under-represented. And there was a need to assess more the social impacts of different technologies. The rural community example has been there: if, as a country, we have gone to large-scale farm production, we have impacted on rural communities because there is no longer the jobs base in these small country towns.
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So we need to encourage the community to buy in to the development of new crops.
Another point that I have put down there is push-marketing. I think sometimes we are too keen, in crop science, to respond to what is the current market. Yet many other technologies are push-marketed onto the community. All of you are starting to get cameras on your digital phones, whether you want them or not. And you start to find a use for it when you’ve got it.
One particular example of push-marketing, I would say, is in my own area. The community currently likes white wheats to make white flour for white bread. So the marketplace is looking to develop whiter wheats. But, actually, yellower wheats are going to have high nutritional value, because it is carotenoids that give our yellower wheats, improving macular degeneration in an ageing population, and vitamin nutrition. So push-marketing is an example of that, where we can teach the community that there is a benefit of trait selection – not necessarily GM – for what could be better for them.
We identified an expertise gap in modelling risk in crop development, and a need to better integrate that. And, as I said, regulation was a major area of discussion.
Another practical example of what we need is a dialogue fund, to engage more in the community and do more of the work that some people have been discussing this morning – and involving the ecologists and regulation, as I said.
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Potential areas for investment: the first is mapping future demand in crops. It is interesting that we had a roomful of experts who felt really cautious about predicting where Australia will be in 20 years, and where the world markets would be in 20 years. We need, therefore, to be able to better predict that, and also to accept that we can’t; diversity needs to be a base.
But, within that, animal feed will increase, so there are opportunities for us to target crops that are suitable for animal feeds. There is potential for aquaculture feed requirements to increase, and an example of research into lupins as aquaculture feed was given. Niche markets can be identified, such as biofuels and high-value varieties or crops.
Sustainability is clearly an issue we can work for as a country, in the areas of soil biology, water-use efficiency and maintaining higher-yielding varieties that won’t damage our environment, and there will be a broad need for this. This would also be a broad area where we can push-market. We can help the community understand that this is important for the future of our country.
We could match inputs to outputs, better predicting the costs of agriculture, the inputs into agriculture and the outputs, and we need better identification of niche markets.
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The final points: train multidisciplinary science; teach old dogs new tricks, plus a new generation; have better integration of bioinformatics; and, as you would always be very surprised to get in a group like this, more dollars for research assessment and consultation. But don’t stand on one foot. March forward while we get the extra data.
Discussion
Question – Barry, this got a run towards the end: the question of cropping diversity, in terms of sustainability but also, I guess, in terms of markets. Did you give a lot of thought to a range of crops? It did seem a little bit unidimensional in the beginning with regard to wheat, which of course is the major cereal. But what about the oil crops and what about the protein crops? Where do they fit, and where do they fit not only in terms of the consumer but also in terms of the cropping systems that we need to have for the land we have been dealt?
Barry Pogson – We didn’t get down to those sorts of particulars. There was a broad agreement that we need diversity in our crop base, and that we have got to start looking for these. But we didn’t have time, within the hour, to really get down to the nuts and bolts of what would need to be done next. My gut feeling out of something like that hour was that it was a starting point on where to go to next, and starting to identify those crops and how best to deal with them, in the context of our country and our environment.
Chair – The Los Angeles Times had headlines of the dangers of the new technology in plant breeding, with the mixing up of genes and the lack of real need for the new technologies. And they were the headlines in the beginning of the 20th century, when crossing between plants was introduced into plant breeding, rather than selection based just on existing lines. So we’ve seen it before!
