Agbiotech's growing pains

Victoria prides itself as the powerhouse of Australian biotech. But not everything is blooming in the state's biotech garden, writes Graeme O'Neill

The Victorian government's temporary freeze on commercial production of genetically modified GM canola has cast a pall over the state's vibrant agricultural biotechnology sector.

While Victoria's Agriculture Minister, Bob Cameron, characterised the decision as a "careful and cautious" response to marketing concerns in the grains industry, senior figures in the agbiotech research sector fear it may only have reinforced perceptions among consumers -- and investors -- that biotech is risky business.

With NSW and Western Australia already committed to legislated three- to five-year moratoriums on GM canola, and South Australia almost certain to follow suit, Prof Roger Parish, head of La Trobe University's School of Life Sciences, fears Victoria's decision has only ensured the state will become the focus of an anti-GM blitz over the next 12 months.

"It's a bit of a worry," he says. "If you put a moratorium on, you have to take it off. When it gets to the end of the 12-month voluntary moratorium, I wonder what political push there will be to legislate for an extended moratorium.

"We know that other countries are going to proceed with it, and less carefully than we are doing. The more plant genes that get patented, the less room we will have to move, even in areas where there are problems or opportunities specific to Australian agriculture.

"We don't want to be beholden to anyone else if we want to solve our own problems. If we're don't address this in an efficient way, we're going to pay a lot of money for intellectual property developed overseas, and that will disadvantage our farmers in overseas markets."

Eminent molecular biologist, and Victoria's Ambassador for Biotechnology, Prof Adrienne Clarke, of the University of Melbourne, also questioned the need for the moratorium. "What further information will we get in a year?" she asks.

"All the information is that it is hugely beneficial ecologically, and 200 million people in the US have been eating [GM foods] for seven years without one report of an adverse health effect."

Recognition

Dr Martin Barlass, director of agricultural industries with the state's Department of Primary Industries, says the Victorian government recognises that agbiotech is going to be very important to the state's future prosperity.

"We're not just talking about GMOs, but about a whole range of applications," Barlass says.

"For example, we've made significant progress in molecular diagnostics, which are very important for preventing outbreaks of exotic disease.

"We've developed a new technique for diagnosis of Newcastle disease in poultry. It can rapidly distinguish between virulent and mild strains. We had an outbreak at Meredith last year, and used the test to determine quite quickly that it was virulent. We put in an eradication campaign that cost around $2 million.

"Twelve months earlier, when this technology wasn't available, NSW had an outbreak of Newcastle disease that took several weeks to diagnose. The eradication campaign cost $30 million."

Barlass says Victoria is building a significant capacity in plant and animal genomics. Research groups at the CRC for Innovative Dairy Products, and the Victorian Institute at Attwood, are seeking genes involved in milk yield and milk composition in dairy cows, and in the tammar wallaby.

"We're doing genomics on pasture species like annual ryegrass and white clover, to see how we can improve yield, disease resistance and delay senescence, and we're looking at oil quality and yield in canola," he says.

Barlass says seeking bioactive compounds that can be added to so-called functional foods is another potentially fruitful area of research. The Institute for Animal Science is using the pig as a model to explore the reputed ability of crops like onions and garlic to reduce serum cholesterol levels.

"We're developing relationships with CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition, and Food Sciences Australia, to explore these claims. High-throughput DNA extraction, sequencing and functional genomics will allow us to test the physiological basis of the health benefits from bioactive compounds."

Of the implications of the 12-month moratorium for the biotechnology sector, Barlass says, "from a scientific perspective, we're building significant capabilities in a technology that will have massive ramifications for the future.

"GMOs are a sensitive issue, but people forget that genetic engineering is only one aspect of the technology -- there are other very significant, non-GM applications that keep getting lost in the debate.

"The government is taking a stance. It's saying that the community and the markets will decide the future of the technology, and it's the government's role to ensure all the safeguards are in place, and all the work has been done to ensure the community is protected.

"Part of the government's role -- and duty -- is to make sure the facts are out there, to encourage open debate.

"The government wants to put in some breathing space, so certain issues can be better debated and understood. The time is not right at this stage, and other governments are making similar decisions."

Liability issues harming local agbio

While research in Victoria appears to be making rapid progress, there are clear signs that commercialising the results of such research will not be easy -- and the moratorium has done no favours to companies struggling to commercialise new discoveries.

Adrienne Clarke says that in the wake of the collapse of the public liability insurance industry, insurance has become prohibitively expensive for small companies. Insurers won't cover field trials of GM crops because the new technology has no historic basis for risk assessment.

Liability issues make it difficult for start-up plant biotech companies to find experienced directors. Companies are also being forced into premature negotiations with large agbiotech companies that can afford insurance for field trials, which prevents them maximising the commercial returns from their technology.

Several researchers have told Australian Biotechnology News of their concerns that large agbiotech companies are exploiting their ownership of key plant-transformation genes to coerce small Australian plant biotech start-ups to negotiate with them, rather than their preferred commercial partners.

Plant industry ploughing ahead

Despite the industry's troubles, Prof Tony Bacic, head of the Plant Cell Biology Centre at the University of Melbourne's School of Botany, says plant biotechnology research will "plough ahead" in anticipation that the new technology will eventually see its way through.

Bacic's department is a partner in the new Victorian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, which will identify genes in wheat, barley and other grains that mediate crop nutrient uptake, or responses to environmental stresses such as drought and salinity.

Other partners in the centre, which is funded by the Australian Research Council and the Grains Research and Development Corporation, are the Department of Primary Industries' Plant Biotechnology Centre at La Trobe University, headed by Prof German Spangenberg, and research groups headed by Prof Peter Langridge at the University of Adelaide and Prof Kay Basford at the University of Queensland.

Another major plant biotechnology initiative in Victoria is the $17 million Plant BioSciences Facility at La Trobe University's Research and Development Park in Bundoora. Its 100-odd scientists will work on improving the quality and productivity of grain, pasture and horticultural species.

Other partners in the facility will be La Trobe University's Centre for Sustainable Production, RMIT University, and Monash University.

Nufarm's plant biotech subsidiary Florigene, which is developing transgenic ornamental flowers including carnations and roses, will relocate from Collingwood to Bundoora.

The new facility will act as an incubator for plant biotech companies. It will have a research 'hotel' to accommodate new biotechnology ventures, and provide shared access to advanced research infrastructure and computer facilities.

Victoria's developing plant molecular science biocluster will soon include the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant Molecular Science, currently headquartered in Adelaide.

Among other things, the centre's researchers have deleted a gene for a potent allergen from the ubiquitous pasture grass, perennial ryegrass -- the LolP1 protein in annual ryegrass pollen is a major cause of hay fever and asthma in Australia. Planted widely, the new LolP1-minus varieties would deliver relief for hundreds of thousands of Victorians who suffer from hay fever or asthma every spring.

Researchers overseas and in Australia have succeeded in engineering wheat and regenerating plants in tissue culture. Wheat is the last of the 'big three' cereals to succumb; rice and maize were successfully transformed a decade ago.

Parish says La Trobe researchers are working to develop more frost-tolerant wheat varieties. Australia's wheat plants may be frost tolerant, but at flowering, their anthers are sensitive to frost damage that can sharply reduce yields.

"We've a isolated a couple of genes from Arabidopsis that nobody else knew about. We're in the process of patenting our anther-specific promoters.

"They should work very well in wheat, but we're using barley for our proof-of-concept work, because it's easier to transform."

Parish says frost tolerant varieties could increase the value of the Australian wheat crop by around $100 million annually, and as the coldest mainland state, Victoria would reap the greatest benefit.

Parish says researchers at La Trobe University are also working to improve canola's resistance to the crop's major fungal pathogen, blackleg. To develop canola varieties with hybrid vigour, researchers are working on a male-sterility system for hybrid seed production -- self-pollination abolishes hybrid vigour.

La Trobe researchers have isolated some transcription factor genes that could be silenced with RNA interference, to abolish pollen production.

Pasture-grass researchers in Spangenberg's group are studying fructans, sugar-based molecules that tolerance, and is using DNA markers to identify drought-tolerance genes in pasture grasses."