GM Crops: Celebrity spotting: Marc Van Montagu and GM energy crops
Biopact
July 5, 2007
Excerpt…
Step aside Presidents, Ministers and Ambassadors. Here comes the Scientist. At the International Conference on Biofuels, we spotted a man who stands above short-term politics and ideologies. However, his work has been controversial and will be even more so in the near future. We are talking about professor Marc Van Montagu, one of the fathers of modern biotechnology.
Van Montagu is the Belgian molecular biologist who, in the 1970s, discovered the gene transfer mechanism between Agrobacterium and plants, which resulted in the development of methods to alter the bacterium into an efficient delivery system for gene engineering. The discovery opened the era of transgenic plants.
The prof developed plant molecular genetics, in particular molecular mechanisms for cell proliferation and differentiation and response to abiotic stresses (high light, ozone, cold, salt and drought) and constructed transgenic crops (tobacco, rape seed, corn) resistant to insect pest and tolerant to novel herbicides. His work with poplar trees resulted in engineering crops with improved pulping qualities. Today, he is working on GM energy crops.
Van Montagu was one of the members of the DOE Joint Genome Institute's team that recently decoded the world's first tree genome, namely that of the poplar. The effort was explicitly placed in the context of the development of future energy crops (earlier post, more here). The vision for so-called 'third generation' biofuels is to design these crops in such a way that their properties conform to one particular or a series of bioconversion processes, which results in higher conversion efficiencies and in the potential to integrate them into true biorefineries. Van Montagu's experience with engineering trees with improved pulping qualities is a serious step towards this development.
GM crops and the developing world
But Van Montagu is an interesting figure for another reason. The professor sees vast potential in the capacity of GM crops to help meet the rapidly growing food and fuel needs of the world's poor. He is actively developing genetically modified crops for them and with them. In order to further this vision, Van Montagu founded and presides over the Institute of Plant Biotechnology for Developing Countries (IPBO). The center is located at Ghent University, Belgium, an institution with a strong tradition in development work and assistance.
It is this combination of curricula, world leading expertise and interests which make Van Montagu such an important personality in the emerging bioeconomy. In the corridors of the biofuels conference in Brussels, we heard the father of biotech commenting on some of the speeches delivered by the politicians: "They were all very careful to avoid the issue of genetically modified energy and food crops." The silence on the topic was indeed so deafening, that it seemed as if everyone either agreed that GM crops will play a big role in the future of energy agriculture or that they are an eternal taboo. At the Biopact, we have not touched on the issue much, but maybe it is time to start looking into it more thoroughly:
The resistance to GM crops is large, especially in the EU and amongst environmentalists. However, at the Biopact, we are not entirely sure of what position to take in this vastly complex debate. Global issues like climate change, rapid population growth in the South, and the depletion of oil resources may well tilt the argument in favor of GM crops.
Consider the following: biofuels and bioenergy offer the only realistic option to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally by replacing fossil fuels. But these green fuels require land to grow and may impact the food security of some groups of people. GM crops could yield both improved energy and food crops, that could help solve the intertwined issues of food insecurity, climate change and energy scarcity. Rapidly growing populations in the Global South, with rising demands for energy and food, add some urgency to the issue.
Moreover, climate change is already irreversible and will impact the developing world most, even if biofuels are used on a large scale to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. Some affected regions on the planet could benefit greatly from crops that are climate-resilient. And indeed, major international efforts are now underway to engineer such crops, by, amongst others, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) - the body that fathered the 'Green Revolution' (earlier post).
In a GM scenario, developing countries with a large potential for biofuels, would become early adopters of GM energy crops, which would guarantee that we get the most out of the land that is allocated to biofuel crops. High-yielding GM crops would reduce the land needed, allow extra incomes to farmers (now biofuel producers and exporters), and reduce pressures on the environment (e.g. less forest-land would have to be cleared for land expansion). The same would apply to food crops, already widely grown in the Global South.
On the other hand, the long-term risks posed by such a GM future remain largely unknown. These risks include unknown impacts on biodiversity, questions about biosafety, dependence of farmers on GM crops (seeds of which they have to buy each year again) and on the multinationals that market them, and the loss of traditional farming knowledge. Moreover, ongoing scientific research produces results that continuously shift the debate. An example: recently, researchers found that GM-field trials consistently underestimate the risks of cross-pollination, an issue that seemed to be largely resolved. But then again, a very authoritative study published recently in Science shows that genetically modified crops may contribute to increased productivity in agriculture that can genuinely be called 'sustainable'; the research analysed, for the first time, environmental impact data from field experiments all over the world, involving corn and cotton plants with a Bt gene inserted for its insecticidal properties (earlier post)…
Full article at Biopact.
