NEW COMMITTEE HEARINGS ON BIOTECH RELEASED
The U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and
Forestry recently held a hearing on the “Benefits and
Future Developments in Agriculture and Food Biotechnology.” Six
panelists answered questions on agricultural biotechnology
and regulation, and discussed the role of regulatory agencies
in the U.S., now working together under a Coordinated Framework
for regulating agricultural biotechnology in the country;
the use of agricultural biotechnology to help meet the world’s
growing food needs; future possibilities for “second
generation” genetically modified (GM) crops; and the
need for a science-based approach in regulating the development
and deployment of GM crops.
Chairman Saxby Chambliss, a senator from the state of Georgia,
recognized that “It is important to institute science-based
systems in other countries that do not enjoy the same level
of confidence in their government or their regulatory systems.” With
him on the panel were Chuck Lambert, deputy undersecretary
of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Marketing
and Regulatory Programs; Jim Greenwood, Chief Executive Officer
of the Biotechnology Industry Organization; and Ambassador
Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation.
Also on the panel were Dr Robert Brackett, Director of the
FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, who stressed
the Food and Drug Administration’s confidence that
bioengineered foods are as safe as their conventional counterparts;
and Ron Heck, Chairman of the American Soybean Association,
who presented statistics on biotech crops in the U.S. and
the advantages experienced by farmers so far.
Transcripts from the speeches made at the Senate hearing
are available at http://agriculture.senate.gov/Hearings/
hearings.cfm?hearingId=1523
REPORTS SHOW BIOTECH SECTOR FAST GROWING IN INDIA
Reports recently released by Biospectrum India show that
the biotechnology sector is fast growing in the country.
Using business data on exports, company growth, and progress
made by biotechnology clusters, the reports detail investments
made in the industry, as well as industry earnings for 2004-2005.
The
top five biotechnology companies in India are Biocon, an
integrated biotech company with interests in discovery,
biopharmaceuticals, and enzymes; Serum Institute of India
and Panacea Biotec, both vaccines manufacturers; Venkateshwara
Hatcheries, a poultry vaccines manufacturer expanding into
the human health care market; and Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech.
The Top 10 biotech companies in the country accounted for
47% of the total biotech business.
According
to the report, the approval of a total of 17 Bt
cotton hybrids for cultivation has contributed significantly
to the growth of the agricultural biotechnology sector. For more information, read the Biospectrum India Articles
at http://www.biospectrumindia.com/content/BSTOP20/
10506133.asp,
http://www.biospectrumindia.com/content/
GuestColumn/10506137.asp,
and http://www.biospectrumindia.com/content/BSTOP20/
10506131.asp.
MANUAL REVISED FOR NEW INDIA PATENT REGIME With a new patent regime in place for 2005, and new laws
incorporating the provisions for granting product patents
in all fields of technology, including chemicals, foods,
drugs, and agrochemicals, the Department of Industrial Policy
and Promotion (DIPP) of the Government of India amended its
Manual for Patents Practice and Procedure (MPPP).
The new revised manual aims to make patent
filing easier, as it gives guidelines on protocols and
procedures to be
followed when examining patent applications in India. It
also aims to make industries, R&D organizations, and
individual researchers and inventors familiar with the patent
regime, thus providing a user-friendly system for obtaining
as well as maintaining patents under the existing patent
law.
Visit official site of the Controller General of Patent,
Designs, and Trade Marks at http://www.ipindia.nic.in.
IRRI-CIMMYT ALLIANCE AGREE ON INITIATIVES
An Alliance formed between the International Rice Research
Institute (IRRI) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center (CIMMYT) have agreed on three important new initiatives.
These include:
- A
joint program for intensive farming systems in Asia
The
program will focus on complete agricultural systems
such as rice-rice, rice-wheat, or rice-maize cropping
combinations.
It will address a range of cross-cutting issues – from
diversification beyond rice, wheat and maize, and breeding
for specific farming system needs, to the development of
resource-conserving technologies.
- A
single unified crop information system for rice, wheat,
and maize, as well as a new integrated
cereal informatics
center
The new unified system will permit new kinds of comparative
biology research to be conducted.
- An
integrated cereal systems knowledge-sharing portal for
extension workers and national programs
The
Alliance’s new interactive knowledge
bank for rice, wheat, and maize will let extension workers
and national
programs working on the three crops share practical information,
best practices, and ideas across a common platform.
Contact Duncan Macintosh, spokesperson of IRRI for more
information on the Alliance at d.macintosh@cgiar.org.
VIETNAM COLLABORATES WITH U.S. AND INDIA ON BIOTECH
Experts on soybean from different U.S. universities have
been giving lectures and exchanging views on the application
of gene technology to create high quality soybean varieties
in Vietnam. The activity is part of a collaborative program
between the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Discussions
centered on soybean genomic mapping and applications of molecular
markers to breed soybeans resistant to floods and diseases.
Vietnam News quoted Prof. Henry Nguyen, Director
of the American National Centre for Soybean Biotechnology
at the
University of Missouri at Columbia, and one of the seminar's
co-sponsors, as saying that the country's soybean yield could
be tripled from the current 1.26 tons per hectare if “new
technologies in soybean cultivation, particularly improved
seed varieties, are developed and adopted by farmers.
Meanwhile, Vietnam and India reviewed their scientific and
technological cooperation and signed a collaborative program
for 2005-2007 during the 6th session of the Vietnam-India
Joint Committee for Scientific and Technological Cooperation
held in New Delhi from May 19-20. They agreed to expand research
into agricultural biotechnology for application to farming
techniques on drought-stricken land, and hybrid rice.
In the said meeting, Vietnam officials requested assistance
from India in the fields of information technology and biotechnology
according to the resolution of the 12th meeting of the intergovernmental
committee signed in 2004.
For a synthesis of Vietnam news on biotechnology, contact
Le Hien of Biotech Vietnam at hienbiotechvn@pmail.vnn.vn.
CHINA JOINS ISAAA BIOTECH INFO NETWORK
China is now part of the growing network of Biotechnology
Information Centers (BICs) of the International Service for
the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). The
China National Center for Biotechnology Development (CNCBD)
and ISAAA recently signed a letter of agreement for the establishment
of the Chinese Agricultural Biotechnology Information Center
to be hosted by CNCBD. It shall, among, others, serve as
focal point for the coordination of their collaborative biotechnology
communication and information activities in China.
Aside from China, fully operational BICs in Asia exist in
Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
and Thailand, while a node in Vietnam is collaborating with
ISAAA to translate and distribute information materials.
Other BICs and or/information nodes are located in Africa
and Latin America.
For more information about the BICs, visit http://www.isaaa.org/kc
SMALL MOLECULE ANCIENT AND WELL CONSERVED, RESEARCH FINDS MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules
which operate by targeting certain DNA sequences, and whose
tasks in land
plants span the range of developmental control, to patterning.
Mutations in individual miRNAs can cause faulty floral development,
or even plant death. In “Antiquity of MicroRNAs and
Their Targets in Land Plants,” Michael Axtell and David
Bartel of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
in Cambridge, Massachusetts look at miRNAs common to a number
of land plants, and see how these commonalities may lead
to a better understanding of plant evolution. Their findings
appear in this month’s Plant Cell Online.
Researchers profiled miRNAs during Arabidopsis
thaliana development, tracking the molecules through specific organs
and tissue types. Their work revealed that tissues in which
a given miRNA is highly expressed are unlikely to also show
high expression of the corresponding targets.
Using a variety of techniques, including microarray detection
of miRNAs, on some plants, researchers also found that some
families of miRNA are not only common to most plants, but
are actually ancient, and have been conserved through evolution
in a wide range of plants with different lifestyles and morphologies.
They detected 11 major families in a gymnosperm, 8 in a fern,
3 in a lycopod, and 2 in a moss.
For the complete article, go to http://www.plantcell.org/
cgi/reprint/17/6/1658
RESEARCH FINDS PROTEIN CRITICAL FOR LYCOPENE ACCUMULATION
All living organisms respond in various ways
to high temperature. Some express a group of conserved
polypeptides collectively
known as heat shock proteins, or HSPs, to allow organisms
to adapt to the temperature change. Inbal Neta-Sharir and
colleagues of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem explore
the “Dual Role for Tomato Heat Shock Protein 21: Protecting
Photosystem II from Oxidative Stress and Promoting Color
Changes during Fruit Maturation.” Their findings appear
in the latest issue of Plant Cell online.
Researchers found that expression of a small HSP (sHSP),
HSP21, in tomato is induced by heat treatment in leaves,
and under normal growth conditions in developing fruit. Through
experiments using transgenic plants expressing high amounts
of HSP21, they concluded that HSP21 (1) plays a role in fruit
reddening, and (2) is necessary for obtaining maximal lycopene
accumulation, since transgenic fruits accumulated carotenoids
(lycopene) earlier than controls. HSP21, moreover, protected
an internal pathway from oxidative stress, which would otherwise
disable plant metabolic activities.
For
more information, download the article at http://www.plantcell.org/cgi/reprint/17/6/1829
PYRAMIDED CROPS FOUND TO ACT BEST ALONE
Work on creating transgenic plants currently focuses on
pyramiding genes, or inserting two dissimilar toxin genes
into the same plant, with the aim of delaying insect resistance.
This advantage for insect resistance management, however,
may be compromised if they share toxins with single-gene
plants in the same field.
An article in the latest issue of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences tests this hypothesis,
and looks
at how “Concurrent Use Of Transgenic Plants Expressing
A Single And Two Bacillus thuringiensis Genes Speeds Insect
Adaptation To Pyramided Plants.” Written by Jian-Zhou
Zhao and colleagues of the Department of Entomology, Cornell
University, the research describes greenhouse work done on
transgenic broccoli expressing insecticidal Bt genes.
Using statistical tests on interactions between
broccoli plants transformed to express different Cry toxins
(Cry1Ac,
Cry1C, or both), and a synthetic population of the diamondback
moth (Plutella xylostella), researchers found that after
24–26 generations of selection in the greenhouse, the
concurrent use of one- and two-gene plants resulted in control
failure of both types of Bt plants. On the other hand, few
insects survived when exposed to pyramided transgenic plants
alone.
Researchers proposed that registration of pyramided transgenic
plants be conducted alongside registration or de-registration
of single-gene Bt plants, since keeping the two together
could provide insects means by which they could be resistant
to both genes in pyramided transgenic plants.
The complete article can be found at http://www.pnas.org/
cgi/reprint/102/24/8426
RESEARCH FINDS PESTICIDES IN FARMERS' BLOOD
The Center for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based
research organization, recently conducted studies on detecting
the levels of pesticide residues in blood samples taken
from Punjab farmers. Their work, Analysis of Pesticide
Residues in Blood Samples from Villages of Punjab, appears
in the electronic journal Down to Earth.
Professor H.B. Mathur and colleagues measured
the amounts of residues of 13 pesticides in 20 randomly
selected blood
samples from four villages — Mahi Nangal, Jajjal, and
Balloh in Bhatinda district, and Dher in the district of
Ropar. Tests showed that pesticide residue levels were very
high, even for pesticides which should be easily degradable,
as per industry standards. These included detected levels
of organochlorine pesticides, which researchers found to
be 15-605 times higher than those found in blood samples
of a US population tested by the US Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in 2003; lindane, at 605 times; and DDT, at
188.
Read more at http://www.downtoearth.org.in/ and http://www.cseindia.org/aboutus/press_releases/press-index.htm.
| A
N N O U N C E M E N T S |
MALAYSIAN
CONFERENCE ON AGRICULTURAL AND MEDICAL BIOTECH Monash University Malaysia is organizing a biotechnology
conference on agricultural and medical biotechnology on September
29-30, 2005 at the Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre, Bandar
Sunway, Malaysia. The conference will be held with the support
of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI),
Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industries, and in
collaboration with the Malaysian Agricultural Research and
Development Institute (MARDI), as well as the Malaysian Biotechnology
Information Centre (MABIC).
For details, please visit the official conference website
at:
http://www.artsci.monash.edu.my/conference/
For more information contact Ms Adeline Yong at: 603-56360600
ext.3510 or e-mail adeline.yong@artsci.monash.edu.my.
IARI TO HOLD COURSE ON BT RESISTANCE MANAGEMENT
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute
(IARI) will hold an international training course on “Bacillus
thuringiensis (Bt) Resistance Management in Insects” from Oct 12-21,
2005 at IARI, New Delhi. The course aims to impart training
on various aspects of Bt resistance management, with an emphasis
on Bt cotton.
A fee of $1,500 will cover the course, excluding lodging
and travel cost. For more information, visit http://www.iari.res.in/mainnews/brochure
_int_coursemod.html,
or email the course director at gtgujar@iari.res.in or gtgujar@yahoo.com. |
