Source: People's Daily Online via Checkbiotech

China will work towards finding wider applications of agricultural biotechnology in the next five years because the sector's growth is important to the country's overall development, China Daily reported on Tuesday.

The country has already worked out its biotech development strategy for the 11th Five-Year Development Program period (2006-2010), the English newspaper quoted Qi Chengyuan, director of the High and New Technology Department under the National Development and Reform Committee, as saying.

The strategy includes efforts to develop the biotechnological seeding of major crops, also called genetically modified (GM) crops, said the paper.

China will also increase its investment in safety monitoring. A more comprehensive and accurate safety evaluation is required for the further commercialization of GM crops.

In genetic modification, genes from outside sources, often from other kinds of crops or bacteria, are transplanted into the crop. The process has been proved effective for increasing insect resistance, salt and drought tolerance, and anti-herbicide and anti-crop disease traits.

The most frequently used outside gene is derived from a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly called Bt, which makes cotton crops produce a chemical that kills bollworms.

Agricultural biotechnology is the field in which Chinese research is closest to its US counterpart, according to Zhu Zhen, a leading rice scientist and deputy director of the Bureau of Life Science and Biotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the China Bio-Industrial Report, released by China National Centre of Biotechnology Development, the Ministry of Agriculture had approved 585 GM plant experiments, including 154 environmental releases and 48 pre-production trials, as of mid-2003, the China Daily reported.

The Chinese government approved the commercialization of GM cotton, tomatoes, pimientos (Spanish pepper) and a species of morning glory in the late 1990s.

Commercialized planting of Bt cotton was introduced in 1997. Today more than 66 percent of China's fields devoted to growing cotton are that type. Last September, Guo Sandui, a leading scientist of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), successfully developed a new hybrid variety of GM cotton that can not only kill worms, but also increase output.

"If the hybrid variety of Bt cotton spreads across China, farmers can save up to 10 billion yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) per year," Guo was quoted as saying.

GM planting has been spreading faster in developing countries. However, China has remained cautious.

Last year, the State Agricultural GM Crop Bio-safety Committee, technically the decision-making body for commercialization of GM planting in China, was reshuffled.

The number of agricultural biotechnology scientists, who had dominated the committee in the previous session, was changed, according to Peng Yufa, a member of the GM crop bio-safety committee and chief scientist at the CAAS biosafety research centre. Bio-safety and environmental scientists have joined the new committee.

The plan is to establish local GM plant safety evaluation bases in cities and provinces and more bio-safety evaluation laboratories independent of the research teams that are developing GM varieties, a source close to the Ministry of Agriculture who requested anonymity told China Daily.

One such bio-safety evaluation base was set up in late 2005 in Shanghai.

Also, more money will be spent on improving the equipment of GM crop testing so that scientists can better monitor the possible floating of the transplanted gene, such as the one modified by Bt, from the targeted plants to the environment, the source added.

Zhu Zhen, the leading scientist to promote the commercialization of GM rice, said he believed the new bio-safety committee and the increased bio-safety investment will help increase the number of biotech applications in agriculture.

"The better regulation of the GM plants is a good thing," Zhu said. "With more bio-safety and environmental scientists joining the review team for GM crops, the team will have more direct experience on the safety and efficiency of GM technology."

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