Publications: About ISAAA

Project Support Activities

Responding to the Challenges Ahead

The Need for Supporting Initiatives

The safe transfer of proprietary agribiotechnology applications from industrialized countries to developing countries, particularly the poor, small-scale farmers in those countries, constitutes ISAAA's primary objective. ISAAA focuses on bringing three kinds of plant biotechnology applications (tissue culture, diagnostics, and transgenics), for which basic research principally occurs in the private sector, into wider use in the developing world. These efforts complement the biotechnology activities of other institutions, networks, and the centers of the CGIAR.

An essential component of pragmatic biotechnology transfer projects (see the section earlier in this report) is to build long-term capacity in developing countries through various project support activities. Because plant varietal improvement and policy development are continuous, dynamic processes, ISAAA provides counsel to developing countries on the latest matters related to the safe and effective transfer of biotechnology applications, including biosafety, food safety, intellectual property rights (IPRs), and socioeconomic analysis. Such services are provided upon request and generally within the context of a specific biotechnology transfer project, so that client countries gain experience in real situations. These support activities are part of ISAAA's five-point operating strategy of assisting, monitoring, providing, mobilizing, and counseling (with the recognition that limited control is associated with a broker's role).

Biosafety was the first of these support activities to be emphasized, quite early in ISAAA's history, and our innovative biosafety workshops continued in 1995. Other support efforts during the year related to the creation of the ISAAA Food Safety Initiative and preliminary activities in biodiversity, along with progress on IPRs and socioeconomic studies.

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