Denis Murphy is worried about plant science research

Dear Editor,

There has often been an uneasy relationship between taxpayer-funded research for public-good applications versus its development for profit in the private sector.

The upsetting of this balance in the UK may be at the core of many of our current concerns, from GM crops to the funding mechanisms of scientific research in general.

Plant science research and its application for crop improvement illustrate my point (see ‘Cuddling, calculating and commercialising the biosciences’, Monica Winstanley, SPA March 2006, p 16). It can be argued that, in these areas, the UK is respectively a world leader and a global casualty.

Public funding

Over the past century, the UK and USA were important global powerhouses of plant science research and its application for crop improvement.

This paradigm of publicly-funded plant science research designed to be exploited both as a public good and, in some circumstances (such as the US hybrid maize) for private profit, started to unravel in the 1970s as plant breeders’ rights were introduced.

During the 1980s, the UK went further in privatising or closing many of its leading crop-related research centres, culminating in the sale of PBI to Unilever in 1989. Since then, the dwindling band of remaining research institutes have tended to focus more on basic aspects of plant science and, with a few notable exceptions, there is almost no practical plant breeding research in the UK public sector.

One of the consequences has been a loss in our capacity to exploit basic research for long-term use as public goods, especially in developing countries. Instead, new technologies like GM crops have been exclusively captured by the private sector and used for short-term commercial gain, for example to produce herbicide-tolerant crops.

Benefits lost

In the UK, the 1980s privatisation agenda proved to be deeply flawed when applied to plant breeding, where relatively immature markets were unable to assimilate the new developments. Instead of creating a vigorous commercial plant-breeding sector, we now have a situation where virtually all of the companies have abandoned the UK.

Since we have also destroyed our public-sector breeding capacity, the UK is now in the strange situation of being a world-class producer of basic plant research that has lost the wherewithal to apply the benefits of such knowledge for crop improvement.

The remaining UK plant research centres tend to focus on model plants like Arabidopsis, rather than crops, and on short-term (1-3 year) government contracts. Such contracts often address current public concerns, such as GM crop segregation, rather than more considered longer-term projects aimed at topics like crop improvement for the growing amount of saline or arid soils where public-good research could really make a difference.

Reasons for concern

Does any of this matter? I think it does.

Firstly, UK taxpayers might question why they are funding basic research in plant science while the country has lost its capacity to exploit its future benefits.

Secondly, we will still have to feed ourselves in the coming uncertain decades of possible climate change, but we have largely lost our ability to breed new crops for this purpose.

Thirdly, the public sector needs to ‘recapture’ technologies like genetic engineering for use in public-good programmes that are of little interest to commercial companies. Such initiatives are now under way in the US and Australia, but not so far in the UK.

As with previous crop improvement technologies, the key to the future success of GM might lie in its application as a public good rather than exclusively for private profit.

Denis J Murphy is Professor of Biotechnology at the University of Glamorgan, Wales. The issues raised in this article are discussed in more detail in his forthcoming book, Plant Biotechnology and Breeding: Societal Context and the Future of Agriculture (Cambridge University Press, early 2007)

Not science

SPA undermines the BA’s mission, complains Richard Weber

Dear Editor,

Sir William Stewart, Chairman of the Government's Health Protection Agency, is quoted as urging caution  about ‘undiscovered effects of mobile phones’ on children (‘Mobile phones and children’, Phil Willis, SPA June 2006, p22).

Fear of ‘unknown unknowns’ is not science.  While it may serve some vested interests, generating and using fear as the means to guide development of public policy is not good government.

Much of the public concern about nuclear power, GM crops, and some medical practices is fueled by fear and rumors about unknowable risks.  For SPA to tacitly endorse the idea of using emotive speculation rather than evidence-based methods as a basis for guiding public policy seems to undermine a central part of the BA's mission.

Richard Weber
CRI Glass Products Division
Evanston, IL 60202, USA

We state very clearly on page 2 of SPA that 'the views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial committee or the BA.' – Ed