Beijing, China
March 27, 2008
Source:
Royal Society of Chemistry via
Checkbiotech
By Hepeng Jia
China is to launch a huge research programme on genetically
modified (GM) crops by the end of the year, according to top
agricultural biotechnology advisors.
Huang Dafang, former director of the
Chinese
Academy of Agricultural Sciences' (CAAS) Institute of
Biotechnologies, says the programme could receive as much as 10
billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) over the next five years - five
times more than the country spent on GM research in the
preceding five years.
A member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference (CPPCC), China's upper house, and a key government
advisor on biotechnology policies, Huang revealed the news at a
briefing on the annual report of the
International Service for the
Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), a
non-profit organisation promoting agricultural biotechnology.
The ISAAA report indicates in 2007 a total of 114.3 million
hectares of GM crops were cultivated worldwide - an increase of
18.3 per cent from 2006.
The most widely adopted GM crop is Bt cotton, engineered to
produce a toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to fight
bollworm. China has developed GM petunias, tomatoes, sweet
peppers, poplar and papaya, and several varieties of rice but to
date policymakers have only allowed GM cotton to be marketed.
Huang says that yield, quality, nutritional value and drought
resistance will be major targets of the new research programme.
As well as rice and cotton - which have been the focus of GM
technology research in the past - corn and wheat will also now
be priority crops for research.
Receptive farmers
Hu Jifa is chief research fellow at the the Chinese Academy of
Sciences (CAS) Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP),
China's chief think tank on food policy issues.
He confirms the programme is set to go ahead and says that
funding for research on safety and environmental monitoring will
be included in the programme.
The GM seeding programme was mentioned in China's 11th Five-year
science and technology development plan (2006-2010) but
decisions on the funding and scope of the programme have been
delayed for two years due to the sensitivity of the area, Hu
says.
But policymakers are now more receptive to GM technologies, says
Hu, and that could lead to more GM crops getting the go-ahead
for commercialisation.
Judy Wang of Croplife China, an organisation representing
agricultural biotech firms, welcomes the news, and says that the
research programme could help make GM crops more acceptable to
Chinese farmers.
Liu Xuehua, an associate professor of environment planning at
Tsinghua University, says that while she is not opposed to GM
technologies, policymaking in the area should be more cautious
and transparent.
'Stakeholders, rather than scientists alone, should be involved
in the policy-making process concerning GM commercialisation so
that more potential risks can be identified,' Liu says. 'The
decision to commercialise them should not be based simply on the
fact that there is now big government funding for the area,' she
adds.
© Royal Society of Chemistry
2008 |
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