GE Rice Research Won't Help Resource-Poor Producers

A recent report commissioned by a number of NGOs and individuals cooperating on a joint project examining current trends in agricultural research and development that affects small farmers in Asia says that the corporate-driven lead role for genetic engineering in rice research does not offer any real solutions to the problems facing resource-poor producers in Asia.

by Chakravarthi Raghavan

Geneva, 9 Aug 2000 -- The corporate-driven lead role for genetic engineering in rice research does not offer real solutions to the problems facing resource-poor rice producers in Asia, says a just published new report, “Blast, biotech and big business,” by Mr. Devlin Kuyek.

The report and research was commissioned by a number of non-governmental organizations and individuals cooperating on a joint project on current trends in agricultural research and development that would affect small farmers in Asia. The participating organizations are: Biothai (Thailand), Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), KMP Philippines, MASIPAG Philippines, PAN Indonesia, Philippine Greens and Ubinig Bangladesh. Also participating in an individual capacity were Drs.  Romeo Quijano (UP Manila, College of Medicine, Philippines) and Oscar B. Zamora (UP Los Banos, College of Agriculture, Philippines).

The report says that genetic engineering (GE) is fast taking the lead role in rice research, based on lofty promises of the “best tools science has to offer” against the pests and diseases that ravage the world’s most vital food crop.  However, the GE research fails to offer real solutions to the problems affecting resource-poor rice producers in Asia.

“There is a fundamental conflict within agricultural research and development — between an agenda that caters to the needs of industry and one that addresses the needs of resource-poor farmers, the bulk of Asia’s population,” says the report.

The report investigates the GE research issues through a study of efforts under way addressing ‘blast’, a fungal disease of rice. The disease provides a big market for fungicides, and now is a hot target for genetic engineering. Transnational corporations, which until now had little incentive to do rice breeding, are pouring money into rice research with the aim of doubling their income source from blast: not just the fungicide sales, but now also the genetically engineered seeds. Disease resistance genes are already being patented by major chemical conglomerates such as Syngenta (Switzerland) and DuPont (USA) and will soon be incorporated into GE rice.

But the catch, says the report, is that the companies can prevent the disease resistance genes from functioning if the plants are not sprayed with their proprietary fungicides.

The motives are clear, but the science is shaky: GE rice won’t provide effective or durable resistance to ‘blast’ since the technology relies on a small number of genes when in fact disease resistance is much more complex.

According to the report’s principal researcher, Devlin Kuyek, “Genetic engineering is too static to deal with the dynamic relationships between plants and disease that are deeply tied to the surrounding ecology.” In contrast, blast can be managed by farmers themselves through readily available means such as wider spacing between plants, less fertilizer, intermittent irrigation, and cultivating different rice varieties.

“Genetic engineering will not provide poor rice farmers in Asia a solution to the blast problem,” the report asserts. “Looking at it from their situation, the GE approach is impractical, expensive and unwarranted, as there are much more affordable and effective ways to control the disease.”

As corporate payoffs are the fundamental drive behind GE research in rice, the real problems for rice farmers and consumers in Asia are disregarded. A recent study conducted in the Philippines identifies the most serious problems affecting the country’s staple food supply as: market conditions, lack of irrigation facilities, inadequacy of post-harvest facilities, indebtedness due to high input costs, weak support services, typhoons, inefficient transport networks, and unequal land distribution. There is thus a severe mismatch between the real constraints to a healthy rice economy and the money being invested in biotechnological “solutions” such as blast resistance.

The ‘blast’ fungus, known as Pyricularia grisea (and as Magnaporthe grisea in its sexual state), can hit all aerial parts of the plant, with most infections on leaves or on the panicles, which turn white and die before being filled with grain. P.grisea is highly specific to rice. Once on a rice plant, it produces thousands of spores, carried readily by air, wind or rain on to neighbouring plants. First reported three centuries ago, it can spread across the world through exchange of seeds, and is a particular problem in temperate flooded and tropical upland cropping systems (marked by cooler climates). Rainy periods and high humidity favour the fungus, as also excessive use of nitrogen (chemical fertilizers) and inadequate spacing between plants - often practised under intensified rice cultivation programs.

Chemicals are somewhat effective against ‘blast’, and a number of major pesticide manufacturers market pesticides directed against it. Breeders have also spent years looking for resistant varieties of rice and breeding them. Many traditional rice varieties resistant to ‘blast’ have been collected, and a number of rice genes responsible for resistance have also been identified.

But neither chemicals nor breeding provide a totally effective answer, since the pathogen can adapt rapidly and crops remain vulnerable, more so with chemically-intensive agriculture.

This has made ‘blast’ an attractive candidate for GE in corporate labs, as it can enable pesticide companies to protect and expand earnings.

Yet, GE does not provide poor rice farmers in Asia a solution. The approach is impractical, expensive and unwarranted too—as there are much more affordable and effective ways to control the disease.

In most rice-growing areas of South and Southeast Asia, blast is less of a problem than other rice-diseases like tungro and bacterial blight.  Few studies have been done to examine the intensity of the problem. A 1991 Rockfeller Foundation study found 3.8% of rice area in Southeast Asia affected by blast, causing crop losses of 3.1 kg/ha (hectare) and production loss of $14.3 million. Yield losses in South Asia were higher at 8.8 kg/ha at cost of $40.9 million. In Indonesia, more recently, during the 1999-2000 season, blast infested some 15000 hectares across 60% of the provinces in the archipelago. In the Philippines, blast is not much of a problem - major problems are stem borer, brown plant hopper, greenleaf hopper, rice bug, leaf folder, golden apple snail and tungro.

Chemical fungicides are a hazard to environment and health, and farmers in Asia are already rejecting them for more sustainable approaches.

Some researchers are looking for non-chemical fungicides. Some Indian studies have identified botanical treatments based on henna, betal leaf and lecithin soybean seeds.

For industry, ‘blast’ is a big money spinner. In Japan, single-target fungicides against blast provides a $400 million market. But the generally insolvent small Asian rice farmers can’t afford this fungicide, which typically absorbs 6-50 percent of total production costs. It can be sustained in Japan, only because of Japan’s highest agricultural subsidy of 70 percent.

But a second limitation of the fungicide is its enormous selection pressure on the pathogen, which rapidly develops resistance. And developing a new fungicide and bringing it on the market may cost up to $100 million.

Farmers are thus left with the choice of using fungicides in moderation, leaving the crop vulnerable to blast, or beginning a cycle of heavier and heavier dosages of chemicals.

Fungicides and breeding have been deployed against blast within the specific model of intensive rice cultivation promoted by the Green Revolution - using chemical greedy varieties, uniform crops and irrigated lands.

Some scientists are now trying to use GE to create ‘durable resistance’ against the blast fungus - plant resistance that lasts for long periods of time. Initially, the idea was to isolate the genes responsible for blast-resistant plant varieties, clone the genes and incorporate them in high-yielding varieties. Such transgenic varieties would have benefited besides industry, seed farmers.

However, some scientists hold ‘durable resistance’ to blast as elusive.  Dr.Sally Leong, a leading molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin (USA) is sceptical and says “it is a never ending cycle”. Another leading scientist studying plant resistance in the UK, Dr.Chris Lamb at the John Innes Centre agrees and says “plant diseases are moving targets..like death and taxes, they will always be with us.”

The fundamental problem is that there is no simple mechanism controlling disease resistance in plants. In most cases, plants respond to a disease through a complex interactive network of genes and signals.  Even within varieties of the same species, response to a particular disease can be entirely different at the genetic level.

In theory, ventures Leong, a casette of genes can be incorporated into a germplasm to fight the disease, but such gene incorporation cannot be done without disrupting other important agronomic characteristics of the plant.

A team of scientists at DuPont’s laboratories are trying to come up with the idea of artificial genes, but this technology is at best a long way off.

But the scientists are looking for a reductionist approach to a complex problem, says Devlin Kuyek. Both fungicides and breeding are too static to deal with the dynamic relationship between plants and disease that are deeply tied to surrounding ecology.  And genetic engineering will also fail to deliver durable resistance for the same reason.

Other scientists working in the field, and using traditional methods, are finding success. Dr. Christopher Mundt of the Oregon State University in the US, who is working with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Yunnan Agricultural University in China in a project utilising the ‘multi-line system’, using different varieties of rice in the same field, found success in controlling ‘blast’. Farmers using this method earned an additional $150 per hectare from harvests, according to the IIRI.

But there is resistance to the idea - not from farmers who are willing to try it - but, according to Mundt, “Ph.Ds have the biggest problem with it.” Farmers have used similar principles to fight blast for generations. The varieties chosen for use in the multi-line project, according to Mundt, were those suggested by local farmers from their experience. And in Vietnam, farmers remembered having used similar strategies years ago.

But the multi-line system, using diversity, goes against the basic tenets of industrial agriculture which needs and breeds uniformity. The multi-line system prevents intensification of blight, and keeping it at manageable levels for rice plants to exert natural defences.

However, it is uniformity that drives agribusiness and ensures profits.  Industry sells a few varieties, mainly hybrid, seeds over large areas, creating a need for agrochemicals, and produces raw material for a homogenous global food system. Diversity interferes with this chain.

Multi-line systems create problems for mechanized farms, but not for the overwhelming majority of farms in Asia where rice is manually harvested. And while differences in quality in a multi-line system harvest complicates milling and sale by agribusiness that use large-scale food processors and traders, farmers find no such problem.

“This raises the crucial question,” says Kuyek. “Who should agriculture feed: farmers and the local corporations or transnational agribusiness?”

But the combination of application of agro-chemicals and plants with disease resistant genes are an advantage for giant firms, like Syngenta’s agrochemicals (formed by merger between agriculture divisions of Novartis and Zeneca) who have got two patents for what are called ‘traitor technologies’—chemically-induced or enhanced disease resistance in plants engineered with a specific gene sequence linked to disease resistance.

These linked, tighter seed-chemical packaging, and TNCs moving into the rice market, through acquisition of hybrid rice companies, are aimed at taking over the breeding process from the public sector, which currently stands behind much of the rice seed market in Asia. In the transgenic scenario, the genes will be patented and owned by the private sector.  Industry can assert greater control over markets, influence national research and development, and extract more value from a country’s rice economy - and the profit maximisation and capital- and technology-accumulation process will benefit home countries of the TNCs.

Whether they want to or not, international agricultural research centres and their research intersect with the strategies of agri-business. The work of IARCs in the interest of small farmers can be easily diverted to less lofty aspirations of scientists, venture capitalists and TNCs.

This is best illustrated, by what the author of the report calls “the travels of a blast gene”.

On 25 March 1999, WIPO published a patent by the Institute of Molecular Agrobiology (IMA) in Singapore, for a blast-resistance gene from a rice variety (C101A51), derived from a rice variety called 5173.

According to the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), 5173 (or IRRI-IRGC-3970) is stored in IRRI's gene bank. The donor is listed as the USA, and the country of origin as the Philippines. But the rice was actually bred in India and arrived at IRRI via CIAT in Colombia (according to Dr.Fernando Correa at CIAT).

How then did IMA come up with this patent?

One of the inventors listed on the IMA patent is Dr.Guo-Liang Wang - the principal investigator of IMA’s rice-disease resistance programme at the time. Some years ago, Wang worked at IRRI, and after he left, he remained a regular borrower from IRRI’s abundant gene bank. Wang is now at Ohio State University, where he is working on a collaborative project with DuPont's genomic group to identify and study different genes in rice resistant to bacterial blight and blast.

In March 1998, Rhone-Poulenc (now Aventis) and IMA signed a collaborative research agreement in genetically engineered or disease resistance in rice and functional genomics of rice and (according to a press release issued at that time), products resulting from the agreement will be commercialized by both parties, through a joint venture company to be established and based in Singapore. Since the agreement with IMA, Aventis acquired Hybrid Rice International, one of the world’s largest hybrid rice companies, and Granja 4 Irmaos, the largest rice seed company in Brazil.

And notwithstanding the UN Convention on Biodiversity, the WTO's rules-based enforceable intellectual property system, with patenting facilitated by the WIPO system, the hybrid rice can be patented and India and its farmers can be forced to pay royalties on it. – SUNS4726

The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor.

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