www.czu.cz ; www.raupp.info

After creating worm-resistant corn and glow-in-the-dark fish, it was only a
matter of time before genetic tinkerers unveiled their next big thing,
November, 2004 by Catherine Clabby, Staff Writer .

Look up. Now they're talking trees, especially in the Triangle.

Science is poised to insert foreign genes into conifers and other trees
harvested for cash.

Opposition already is stirring. The prospect raises ecological and cultural
issues unlike any encountered before.

But the promise is big, too, said Claire Williams, a geneticist and visiting
professor at Duke University. Designer trees may grow faster and yield
products cheaper. That could preserve existing forests while the world's
appetite for wood and paper keeps growing.

Supporters and skeptics, she said, need to talk. "We have a narrow window
for constructive dialogue. In five or 10 years it will be too late,"
Williams said.

This week, she and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke will host
a gathering of scientists, lumber industry people, environmentalists and
regulators to do just that. The two-day forum at Duke, funded by the
National Science Foundation, will be closed to the media so that people can
chat freely.

Also this week, the Institute of Forest Biotechnology will host a conference
called "New Century, New Trees" in Research Triangle Park. It also wants to
generate straight and informed talk about a field soon moving from the
research stage to the planting stage.

Change is sprouting

So far, genetically altered trees are found in only a few places outside
corporate or university research plots. Chinese foresters raise altered
poplars resistant to bugs. And Hawaiian farmers tend papaya trees that have
been made immune to a ringspot virus by a gene imported from that virus.

But change could be coming fast to states with sizable lumber-product
industries, including North Carolina. In coming years, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, which reviews and permits genetically modified organisms, is
expected to see more applications to test and then grow modified trees.

Geneticists at N.C. State University already have made experimental aspens
that produce less lignin, the cellular substance that makes trees rigid and
takes polluting chemicals and a lot of effort to break down in pulp mills.

In South Carolina, ArborGen, a research company launched by International
Paper and MeadWestvaco Corp., wants to market genetically altered trees by
the end of this decade.

"An increasing number of field trials will be very visible in the next three
years," predicts W. Steven Burke, a vice president at the N.C. Biotechnology
Center and a board member at the forest institute.

Plantations filled with engineered trees could follow.

Burke expects that people outside the forestry and lumber fields will be
watching closely, because trees are so precious in aesthetic and in
functional ways.

"Trees are requisite for life on this planet," he said. "We can survive
without corn. We cannot survive without trees."

Worries of wide effects

Re-engineered trees would differ significantly from modified crops such as
corn and soybeans, Williams said.

Trees are perennials that can live more than 100 years. They also produce
large amounts of pollen that could carry altered genes for miles, making it
more likely to affect nature's genetic profile.

That worries Alyx Perry, director of the Southern Forests Network, who will
attend Williams' meeting. She sees possible environmental threats to natural
forests and economic threats to private landowners raising timber on those
forests.

"These are clearly brilliant people," Perry said of the scientists leading
the charge into this new field. "But we have a real concern with ultimately
how this technology is going to affect the land."

Some scientists advocate creating modified trees that are sterile, so their
pollen can't mix with other trees. Similar strategies are under
consideration to control the spread of altered genes from other
re-engineered crops.

But some environmentalists question whether this planet needs sterile trees.

Extremists in this debate have previously resorted to sabotage. In 2001,
vandals damaged most of the genetically altered trees grown at a University
of Oregon program. That same year, an office building at the University of
Washington was firebombed. It housed a geneticist who was developing a
fast-growing poplar.

Dawn Parks, a spokeswoman for ArborGen, said her company hopes the Duke
conference will help people with a stake in the debate sort substantive
issues from those without merit.

"We want to determine which are real and which don't need to be addressed,"
she said.

Speaking face to face, Williams said, can only help. "I sympathize with all
the different groups. It was time to talk," she said.

[newsobserver.com]

------------------------------------------
Posted to Phorum via PhorumMail