The GM ban: what it will mean for plant biotech

The future of the Victorian wheat industry has moved from a biosecure glasshouse into a small, netted field plot at the International Centre for Cereal Breeding (CIMMYT) in Mexico.

It's a drought-tolerant variant of Bobwhite, an average variety that just happens to regenerate readily in tissue culture -- a trait that saw it become the first wheat variety to be genetically engineered, after more than a decade of effort.

Molecular geneticists at CIMMYT, a core partner of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Molecular Plant Breeding based at Melbourne's La Trobe University R&D park, have endowed Bobwhite with the dreb gene, discovered by Japanese molecular geneticists in the tiny crucifer Arabidopsis thaliana.

The gene confers phenomenal resistance to water stress. Under simulated drought conditions in a glasshouse, the dreb-enhanced Bobwhite plants stay upright and green long after standard Bobwhite plants wither and collapse.

The dreb drought-tolerance trait is probably a decade or more from commercialisation. It may arrive just in the nick of time for Victorian growers.

Since the late 1970s, much of the Victorian wheat belt has been in the grip of a prolonged climatic drying phase. Rainfall in the state's west has declined by 20 per cent, and major reservoirs in the west and central north of the state are dry, or at historically low levels.

The cold fronts that formerly swept across western Victoria's wheat crops have shifted south, and much of their rain now falls uselessly in the Southern Ocean.

Climatologists are warning of the prospect of a further 20 per cent decline in rainfall by 2030. If they are right, Victoria's wheat industry faces even more frequent and deeper droughts.

Dreb wheats will not be seen in the wheat belt anytime soon. But for growers who are accustomed to uncertain rainfall, and confronting the prospect of even more dry seasons, they cannot come soon enough.

Dr Bryan Whan, director of the Molecular Plant Breeding CRC, says the dreb experiment is in its earliest phase. The drought-tolerance trait has side-effects that include stunting and altered timing of flowering and seed set -- defects that must be corrected to create high-yielding cultivars.

The Bracks government's four-year moratorium on GM crops in Victoria means a delay of at least four years before the CRC could contemplate trialling the dreb prototypes from CIMMYT under field conditions in Victoria.

The moratorium has cast a pall over the crop biotech industry, which until now, has been particularly strong in Victoria. Inexplicably, the Bracks government felt it necessary to impose a four-year moratorium on canola even amid signs that the deep freeze on GM crops in virulently 'anti' Europe and the UK shows clear signs of thawing.

A spokesman for Victorian agriculture minister Bob Cameron says the legislation does not automatically ban field trials of other GM crops. But the end result is an effective ban on all transgenic crops, because the legislation gives the minister the power to second-guess any approval by the federal GM watchdog, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator.

If the GM crop is wheat, the timidity of state governments in the face of pressure from anti-GM movement -- or the political opportunism of those states that see a marketing advantage in remaining 'clean and green', could hand Australia's biggest rivals in the export market -- the US and Canada -- a four-year head start.

It could be a decade or more before the first dreb wheat varieties are commercialised, and the potential impact of global warming on wheat yields 20 years hence is not on the political radar of state governments.

The paradox of the moratorium is that the very industries that the Bracks government was trying to protect -- the grains and dairy industries -- will be among the biggest beneficiaries of gene technology.

Peter Owen, chair of the Australian Dairy Industry Council's working group on biotechnology policy, says CSIRO researchers have developed a virus-free GM clover that is potentially more productive, and another GM clover that will not cause bloat.

Natural foaming agents in current clover varieties cause gas bubbles to build up in the cow's digestive tract, triggering a reflex that seals the oesophagus. The cow, unable to release the pressure build-up, can die rapidly, in agony.

"If we don't take advantage of properly-researched developments like this, we'll lose our competitive edge in agricultural export markets," Owen says. "It's a real challenge for us -- we need to unite with New Zealand, as pasture-fed dairy producers. We need to get beyond this childish business."

Owen says the failure to consider the long-term consequences for the international competitiveness of the dairy industry was what concerned him most when Victoria's two biggest dairy processors, the Murray Goulburn Cooperative, and Tatura Milk, lobbied the government -- without consulting dairy farmers -- to impose the GM canola moratorium.

The CRC for Molecular Plant Breeding is also using gene technology to develop transgenic, low-lignin pasture grasses with increased digestibility -- in pasture-fed dairying, production is fundamentally limited by the amount of grass that the cows can eat and digest per day.

With climate change in prospect, CRC researchers are also developing more productive and nutritious GM pasture grasses with higher levels of plant sugars called fructans.

Whan says some of these projects are well advanced, and the CRC is talking to commercial partners, who are very interested -- but commercialisation will depend on being able to conduct field trials, and eventually, to release the new GM crops and pasture grasses into the environment.

Last year the Molecular Plant Breeding moved its headquarters from the Waite Institute, in Glen Osmond, SA, to La Trobe University's R&D park in Bundoora, after receiving an offer of increased funding through the Victorian Department of Agriculture, a core partner.

The fact that the South Australian Government was contemplating a legislated moratorium on GM crops and pasture plants was a factor in the decision to move to Victoria, according to Whan.

"At the time the SA moratorium was being considered, I made inquiries about what the impact would be of a continuation of the moratorium on GM organisms in New Zealand.

"The answer was that New Zealand would have lost many millions of dollars in research funding and investment -- so where is Australia in the total scene? We're just imposing a moratorium at a time when New Zealand has been through one, and lifted it.

"In the UK, the companies involved in developing and commercialising GM crops are pulling out.

"When you look at what is happening on other countries like the US, China, India, Argentina and even South Africa, these moratoriums put us in the backwater.

"What's going to happen to Australia? We've got local and international groups and organisations waiting to invest, and they're now asking us questions about what the moratoriums mean." The quality of Australia's agricultural research is well known, but its credibility is now at stake, according to Whan.

"When we talk to our peers overseas, they ask us, 'What on earth is going on in Australia?' It doesn't go down well."

Whan says Victorian scientists and students involved in developing GM crops are depressed at the way they and their work are being demonised, and politicised, and are worried about their future.

Whan says an aspect of the anti-GM campaign that angers him most is the claim that GM crops will be bad for the environment, when the reverse was actually true.

Dr Geoff Fincher, one the CRC's researchers at the Unviersity of Adelaide, had identified a gene for a thaumatin-like protein that enhances drought tolerance in barley. It had subsequently been shown that, in addition to protecting the plant against abiotic stress -- in this case, water stress -- it had a wider role in resistance to a number of diseases.

Similarly, a gene that influences herbage quality in annual ryegrass had been found to be involved in a more generic defensive system. Introduced into tobacco, for example, it killed leaf-chewing Heliothis caterpillars.

Whan says many disease- or pest-resistance genes, like the classic rust-resistance genes in wheat, are very specific in their action, and fail when resistant new pests break through them.

The new genes appear to be involved in more generalised plant defence mechanisms, so they could be expected to protect against a wider range of plant pests and diseases, but to be more durable.

With their generic action, they could protect the environment by helping to eliminate not one, but multiple chemical pesticides.

"One of our students conducted a survey of farmers' attitudes, and found that most farmers thought GM crops would have a big impact on production, but not environmental benefits - they didn't think about how they could reduce chemical and fuel consumption.

"I can go out and tell farmers that GM canola will deliver big environmental benefits, but then someone like Julie Newman (organiser of the Network of Concerned Farmers) tells them there is no evidence of increased productivity. Yet she ignores farmer surveys in Canada that confirm GM canola also delivers economic benefits."