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The importance of biotech development to the country's overall economy will see China work towards finding wider applications for agricultural biotechnology in the next five years as the sector's growth is significantly important to the overall economy.

A biotech development strategy for the 11th Five-Year Guidelines (2006-10), has already been identified says Qi Chengyuan, director of the High and New Technology Department under the National Development and Reform Committee.

Within that strategy efforts will be made to develop the biotechnological seeding of major crops -- commonly known as genetically modified (GM) crops.

China will increase its investment in safety monitoring. It's considered that a comprehensive and accurate safety evaluation is required before further commercialization of GM crops.

Technology on the rise

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 to increase insect resistance, salt and drought tolerance, and anti-herbicide and anti-crop disease traits.

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

Agricultural biotechnology is a field in which Chinese research is close to its US counterpart, according to Zhu Zhen, a leading rice scientist and the 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 the China National Center of Biotechnology Development, the Ministry of Agriculture, as of mid 2003, had approved 585 GM plant experiments, including 154 environmental releases and 48 pre-production trials. 

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

Commercialized planting of Bt cotton was introduced in 1997. Today more than 66 percent of China's fields growing cotton are of 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 is grown across China, farmers can save up to 10 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) per year," Guo said.

GM planting has been accepted more quickly in developing countries. According to a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, which was released in January, four new countries accounting for a quarter-million farmers planted biotech crops as part of an 11 percent increase in the growth globally of GM crops. Global planting of GM crops has soared by more than fifty-fold from 1.7 million hectares in six countries in 1996 to 90 million hectares in 21 countries in 2005.

Last year Iran became the first country to approve the commercial planting of GM rice in the world.

Greater safety concerns

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 Center. Bio-safety and environmental scientists have joined the new committee.

The plan is to establish local GM plant safety evaluation centers in cities and provinces with more bio-safety evaluation laboratories -- independent of the research teams developing GM crops -- a source close to the Ministry of Agriculture told China Daily. One such bio-safety evaluation base was set up in late 2005 in Shanghai.

More money was to be spent on GM crop testing equipment so that scientists could better monitor all aspects of any potential environmental impact, a source explained. 

Uncertainties remain

Zhu Zhen, the leading scientist to promote the commercialization of GM rice, said he believed the new bio-safety committee and the increased investment would 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."

However, so far, none of the major crops -- such as rice, wheat and corn --have been commercialized in China. 

Zhang Yongjun, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Plant Protection of CAAS, says the top bio-safety problem is whether the insects that Bt crops are targeting -- mainly bollworms -- will develop a resistance to the crop and potentially becoming 'super pests'.

A 'safety net' -- a belt of non-GM crops -- has been widely adopted in the US to keep pests from developing that resistance.

In China, farmers who grow commercialized Bt cotton have not created these 'safety nets'  because the diverse planting structure gives natural protection explained Zhang. It was suggested by Zhu that the diverse planting of rice and wheat would provide further safeguards. 

But Zhang said the scenario might be different if GM rice was commercialized. Cotton farmers often planted food crops while rice farmers were very likely to introduce one type of GM rice to maximize their returns because their areas of arable land are so small.

"If any GM crop goes commercial, very serious and reasonable policies, such as subsidizing farmers whose land becomes a refuge, must be worked out," Zhang says.

Another problem is that although the bollworms have been curbed by Bt cotton, other minor insects, such as reuters (Cyrtopeltis tenuis), have thrived to become major threats to the crop.

So far farmers have used broad-spectrum pesticide to kill reuters but there are health risks associated with the use of the pesticide.

Zhang said specific pesticides should be developed to resist 'reuters'.

"As a whole, the efficiency of GM cotton has not been offset by the rise of minor pests or other problems," Zhang said. "But we have to be more cautious in developing major GM grains whose situation might be more complicated." 

Ma Tianjie, vice-campaigner for Greenpeace China, says that the increased efforts in bio-safety evaluation should not automatically lead to the commercialization of GM crops.

"The evaluation process remains less transparent and the public still do not have a say in the decision-making process," Ma said. "Before commercializing any GM crops, we must consider all possible preventive measures against its potential harm."

(China Daily February 14, 2006)