2005 marks the 10th year that Transgenic crops have been grown in Australia. To mark the occasion a field day was held in November on the Darling Downs. We speak to John Raines, Managing Director of Monsanto Australia and keynote speaker Dr Clive James, Chair of International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) about the highlights in crop biotechnology for the past 10 years and whats in store for the future.

Steve Ainsworth, Commercial Manager of Monsanto in Australia, what are we doing here today?

Globally today the Biotech industry in which Monsanto is one part is celebrating an anniversary of 10 years of Biotech globally. This is a technology which Australian cotton farmers have had the ability to participate in since 1996 and today is recognition of that in Australia.

Not only for the cotton industry but also for the promise of what the technology may have to offer for Australian Agriculture in a broader sense.

At this field day we’ve heard from visitors from other parts of the world. We have talked about the introduction of cotton biotech in Australia which has been from my personal experience (and Monsanto’s experience), probably the best example globally of the introduction of technology. This is where the industry has come together in a collaborative partnership to deliver technology which has real meaningful benefits to the industry over the last 10 years.

John Raines, Managing Director of Monsanto Australia. Can you give us a rundown of what you think have been the big achievements of biotechnology in the last 10 years in Australia.

I would say that the big achievement has been the way the cotton industry has come together as a whole and adopted biotech technology. I have been here in the country for a few months now and have had the chance interact in several different industries. One thing that is very apparent is that the cotton industry has certainly got an aligned vision and as a result we saw the first introduction of biotech cotton here in 1996. Today we will finish out the 10 Year event in 2005 with over 80% of the crop having Bollgard and Roundup Ready in it. I think that it clearly speaks for itself that the industry has brought this technology forward.

And looking forward, what do you see in the next 5 years, 10 years and longer?

I think a couple of things hit me.

One is that if you look over the last 10 years or so, one of the things that we’ve clearly seen is farmers have communicated to us opportunities in both agronomic advantages in growing the crops but certainly economic advantages. That is savings in equipment and labour, savings in time and the ability to more efficiently manage their crop.

While there are other agronomic traits that will come forward; the environmental conditions that we deal with, whether its coolness in the spring because we get rain and the temperature changes or its during the heat of the summer when we are experiencing lack of rain and moisture.

We are working today currently on drought tolerance or water use efficiency in cotton. We hope to have the first progeny seed here available for field testing in spring 2006 for the 2007 harvest crop. That technology would probably be available sometime in the 2013-2015 timeframe. While that sounds like along time away, it takes that type of forward thinking to be able to do exactly what we are seeing today with Bollgard and Roundup Ready.

The same exists with cold tolerance. We have that technology in the greenhouses today. We are clearly seeing that seedlings can take a much wider degree of variance in soil temperature.

Those are just two things that we commonly have issue with here in Australia that will absolutely impact the cotton industry.
 

Dr Clive James the Chair of the ISAAA. Can you tell us what ISAAA is for a start?

ISAAA is a charitable foundation that has two missions.

One is to alleviate poverty, hunger and malnutrition in developing countries of the world. Right here in your backyard in Asia you have more poor people than the rest of the world put together.

We also share knowledge. We believe that sharing knowledge is absolutely essential. You cannot make a good decision without good knowledge; it is as simple as that. So we believe that the knowledge that Australia has for example from developing its unique and its very successful biotech cotton program can be shared on a global basis.

So those are the two missions; alleviation of poverty and sharing of knowledge. Sharing; the word sharing being a very important word and I think Australians are known as caring and sharing people; here is an opportunity for them to share on a global basis.

We are here to mark 10 Years of Biotechnology in Australia. From your perspective what have been the highlights of the past 10 years of biotech in Australia?

If we look at the success of your biotech cotton program it has been quite spectacular. The benefits here are increases in farmer income; you are looking at increases of the order of $70.00 per hectare and that has come from reduced use of insecticides. Today you have been able to reduce insecticide application in cotton by approximately 80%.

If we look more broadly at the success in the last 10 years what we see is that with the commercialisation of biotech crops between 1996 and 2005 (that’s the 10th Anniversary of commercialisation), we have been able to increase farmer income by US$27 billion per year. Those are significant increases and at the same time you have been able to reduce pesticide application by 172 million kilograms per year; one hundred of that is right here in Australia. I think that the model that you have in place for cotton is one of the best in the world and that means that the cotton industry is working together with politicians, policy makers, with regulators, with the private sector to make it all happen.

The challenge that you have now in Australia is to share that knowledge with others and of course to apply it to other crops in the country including canola but perhaps more important wheat.

Moving on to the next 5, 10 or 15 years, what do you think we have got to look forward to in biotech in Australia?

We believe that the first decade of biotechnology is just the start and we believe that you will get stellar growth in terms of biotechnology in the next decade. We predict at least the doubling of acreages, moving from 80 million hectares today, which incidentally is about 12% of the total land area of Australia (a very large area), to double or triple that figure. With crops like rice, the most important food crop in the world coming on stream and wheat becoming a GM technology.

Traits like resistance to Fusarium, which will give you a safer wheat product are imminent and the big one probably is drought. If we look at the global agriculture, we have 1.5 billion hectares that are cultivable land today. At least two thirds or 1 billion hectares of that, (more than the total land area of Australia) is subject to drought. This has always been the major constraint since the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Very important here in Australia in the last two years you have had a very severe drought. This technology will bring stability of yield and an opportunity to provide for the 9 billion people that we have living on this globe today. Australia is in a very important position geographically to participate in the second decade because this technology will be a feature of Asia in the second decade whereas it was Latin America in the first.

This drought tolerance is going to be of enormous interest to Australian farmers. Can you elaborate in a bit more detail on how that is done and how it would be introduced into an industry?

The most advanced is the corn crop. Information just released last week that you can get a 15 – 20% increase on average with these drought tolerant lines. That is music to the ears of farmers. If we look at traditional crop breeding programs, you are increasing productivity by 1 – 2% per year. Here is a technology that will allow you to increase step wise by 20% and obviously that has enormous implications on a global basis. It has enormous implications for sustainability, a word that we often use but we need to put it into practice and if we don’t practice what we preach we become hypocrites.

Happily, this is a technology that can deliver very significant benefits and we expect that technology to be available in corn by 2010 to 2012 and cotton thereafter.

Further Information:
David Kelly