Anti-GM attitude 'paradoxical': Amman

Dr Klaus Amman is puzzled by the furore over pollen drift from genetically modified crops - "Pollen did not learn to fly with transgenes," he said.

Amman, director of the Bern Botanic Gardens in Switzerland, and one of Europe's most prominent defenders of GM agriculture, told yesterday's special delegates forum on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre it was paradoxical that anti-GM activists were so concerned that pollen from herbicide-tolerant transgenic canola varieties would contaminate conventional canola crops.

Activists and consumers did not seem to be concerned that canola crops could be contaminated by pollen from the Brassica napus progenitor of canola, which is still grown as a source of industrial lubricants -- its oil contains high levels of toxic erucic acid.

One of the solutions to containment of transgenes was very obvious -- by applying the rules that seed producers had been using for decades to keep their seed pure, and it was possible to reduce contamination to undetectable levels.

Seed growers in Switzerland, for example, already produced pure seed of rye and oats cultivars by ensuring adequate separation of different varieties -- the safe distance for these species, which were notorious for hybridizing spontaneously, varied between 200m and 2km.

The anti-GM movement's objections to 'Terminator' technology, a GM technique that would prevent farmers saving transgenic seed for next year's crop, ignored the fact that hybrid maize was effectively a Terminator crop already, because it did not come true from seed after the initial planting.

Conventional plant breeding had already developed a hybrid maize that produces no pollen -- it could be used to prevent transgene contamination of conventional crops.

"Even more promising is apomixis. Around 10 per cent of wild flora produce seeds without cross fertilisation. We're on the verge of introducing this technology to crops.

"We have a candidate gene from maize, called elongate, which is now being cloned, and experiments are under way to verify its function. Whether a crop is transgenic or not, apomixes will be beneficial, because it means every subsequent generation is identical to the first."

Amman told the forum, "The opponents [of GMOs] have too easy a game, and play around with public anxieties."

He said Europeans were fearful of GM crops, and anti-GM activists were trying to prevent them being grown in developing nations.

Europeans favoured organic agriculture, and had ethical an cultural objections to genetically modified crops. But Amman cited the playwright Bertold Brecht who had said , "First you have get something to eat, and then you can talk about culture and morality."

"In Europe, it's quite the reverse," he said. "Our farmers don't need to earn money because they are heavily subsidised. I am promoting organic farming in Switzerland but I'm against the eco-imperialists who are trying to impose Europe's views on Africa and other countries."

Amman criticised the anti-GM movement's strategy of deliberately lying about gene technology to create fear in the community. He said anti-GM organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth should be subject to the same standards of truth and balance in its public pronouncements as government agencies and corporations.

He cited the example of Greenpeace press release in Mexico at the time of the controversial Nature paper by Chapela and Quist claiming to have identified DNA from transgenes from GM corn in local land races of corn in Oaxaca.

"They said, 'It's a worse attack on our culture than if they had torn down the cathedral of Oaxaca and built a McDonald's over it'.

"They fly around like free birds with their lies. "

He said it was now clear that Chapela had an anti-GM agenda. When a colleagues had analysed seed from one of the same maize varieties Chapela had used, and found no evidence for the presence of transgenes. He had drawn Chapela's attention to the contradictory evidence, but Chapela had failed to reply, and had not cited the contradictory result in his Nature paper.

Amman said it was not the case that modern maize would adversely affect biodiversity centres for maize. "On the contrary, in the rich centres of biodiversity, the populations are very robust in the face of introgression."

But he said that while Nature had withdrawn Chapela's paper, molecular geneticists acknowledged that introgression of maize transgenes into Mexico's land races was inevitable -- indeed, Mexican researchers had recently confirmed the presence of transgenes in their local land races, but had not yet published their results, pending identification of the source of the transgenes.

'Monstrous mutant'

Amman contrasted the fearful attitude of Europeans towards GM crops to the way Mexico's ancient Maya civilization had reacted to the appearance of a "monstrous mutant" of the wild cereal teosinte in their fields -- the first primitive maize variety.

On the evidence of the archeological record, the enormous changes to the architecture, floral and seed-head structure of teosinte that led to the first maize had occurred over little more than a decade, and the Maya had created new goddesses in maize's honour.

"I wonder how Europeans would have reacted. What kind of spirit do we have, speaking of new GM crops only as an invasive threat, and ignoring the nice hybrid flowers in every European city. I simply deplore this negative attitude."

Amman said as few as five major genes had been involved in the profound changes to the architecture, floral and seed head structures of teosinte, that had given rise to maize.

Gene technology had now made it possible to transform wheat into a monstrosity with maize, with enormous seed heads."