Source: excerpt from "Tough To Swallow" by Joseph Krause, Business Today, Egypt, August 27, 2004

South of Cairo University, behind the tall concrete walls that separate it from the bustling city, sits the Agricultural Research Center, a sprawling commune of fields, greenhouses and administrative buildings. Here scientists in lab coats and straw hats wander through narrow furrows in several sequestered gardens, carefully monitoring and evaluating a microcosm of Egypt's agricultural landscape the size of a football field. It was here that Egypt launched its own applied biotechnology research program, the Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute (AGERI), in 1990.

Anticipating the important role the burgeoning science of genetics would eventually come to play in agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture partnered with USAID to establish the center. Now, nearly 15 years later, it may be on the verge of launching the country's first commercially grown genetically modified crop, a strain of cotton that could save the industry millions of pounds every year by boosting output and virtually eliminating chemical crop spraying.

"Cotton is a very safe product to start with, because the areas in which cotton is grown are restricted to certain varieties, so each variety is segregated," says Hanaiya Al Itriby, AGERI's director and one of the pioneers of GM technology in Egypt. "Every year there's a decree that comes out that says the Giza variety so-and-so will be grown in this district, so it's allocated to specific areas."

Cotton is also a safe bet for export markets. Although exporting cotton seed oil from genetically modified plants would qualify as a GM product, the fibers themselves, especially when transformed into yarns and fabrics, do not contain any genetic material that would shut them out of European markets, and while many consumers refuse to eat GM products, few object to wearing them.

Over the last decade, AGERI has been actively researching a wide array of products -- everything from virus-resistant potatoes to bananas that contain vaccines for hepatitis. But with cotton, the center has found a commercial partner in the Monsanto Company, the US-based producer of the world's No. 1 herbicide, and anticipates Egypt will be able to start growing GM cotton by 2006.

The new cotton crop will contain a gene purchased from Monsanto that makes the plants resistant to certain insects, but Al Itriby maintains that the crop will retain its unique Egyptian characteristics in every other respect. In addition to collaborating with Monsanto, AGERI has also cooperated with the Cotton Research Institute (also part of the ARC) to insure that the new plants produce the sought-after long staple fibers Egypt is know for. "The breeders of the cotton are making sure that we keep the Egyptian line with all its characteristics," Al Itriby says.
"The selection was done by the breeders, so it's a collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach."

Although many in the cotton industry are optimistic about the new technology, some wonder whether the idea will actually catch on among Egyptian growers. "The only thing they modify is the ability of the plant to sustain the attacks of insects, so that means less spraying, less cost and a better quality of fiber -- theoretically at least," says Amin Abaza, the Managing Director of the Modern Nile Cotton Company, which is heavily involved both in the agricultural and industrial side of the crop. "But all of this remains to be seen, it has to be tried. [The grower] has to see it to believe it, especially our growers. They don't usually believe what the scientific community tells them until they see it themselves and they make sure that there really is a lower cost and a higher quality."

Abaza, who is in favor of genetically modified crops, believes that resistance to the concept will not come from any widespread health or environmental concerns, but from the increased price of the new seeds. "People have to be convinced that if they are paying a little more for the seed, they are going to get their money's worth in crop management and in the quality of the crop, and this has to be seen in practice."

Because the new seeds contain a patented gene, anyone who uses them will have to pay a royalty to Monsanto, but advocates say that increased output, along with the amount farmers will save on chemical fertilizers, will more than cover the price of the switchover. Al Itriby points out that, in addition to developing the new crops, AGERI is also actively working to ensure that they find both commercial producers and markets. "We are not doing research for research only, we are looking to put a product out," she says.

Although Egypt will have to purchase the initial genes from an international company, Al Itriby expects that the scientists at AGERI will eventually be able to develop their own genes, and has created an intellectual property rights office to help them to secure their own patents. "Once you have your own genes, you have something important that you can use to barter if you want something that another person, or another institution, or even the private sector has and is willing to exchange."