www.czu.cz ; www.usab-tm.ro ; www.raupp.info

European countries with strong lobbying against GM crops have reacted
positively to a new technique developed by Lincoln scientists using genetic
engineering without foreign DNA, April 2005 by Tim Cronshaw .

Most interest in the new way to genetically modify plants has come from
Europe, to the surprise of even Crop & Food Research, which holds the
technique's intellectual property rights.

The method ? called precision breeding ? allows for the transfer of plant
genes without introducing genetic material from another species.

Senior scientist Dr Tony Conner says the research organisation has received
many inquiries from around the world since the work was introduced at
international science conferences late last year.

"To our surprise (the interest is) largely from Europe, which is interesting
given the concern of Europeans about genetic modification."

It is being warmly received by developing countries in Asia, South America
and Africa, he says.

Dr Conner says Third World countries often lack the regulations to deal with
genetic modification.

He says smaller companies that do not have the big expense accounts of large
corporates view it as a means of using the technology.

"There has been a lot of support for the idea. I think people see it as a
way forward in the GM debate. It overcomes the big issue of public concern
about ethics and how they feel uncomfortable about moving genes across the
wide boundaries from animals to plants or bacteria to plants."

Dr Conner says scientific and industry groups recognise that there is still
much work that can be done with same-species genetic modification, without
causing public concern.

Only genetic material that naturally crosses within the same species is
transferred and the method avoids established GM methods using bacterial
DNA.

The next stage is to isolate a range of valuable potato genes to improve
existing potato cultivars.

The characteristics being targeted include nutritional value, visual
appearance and disease resistance.

He admits the work had drawn a mixed reaction.

"We have to recognise that there are portions of the public that we will
never be able to convince. But we hope to appeal to mainstream New
Zealanders," he says.

Greenpeace spokesman Steve Abel says the main concerns are the lack of
knowledge of the effect of releasing new genetically modified organisms into
the environment and the random enforced insertion of DNA into a living
organism.

"We don't have an ethical issue of GM itself with its lab use. Our concern
is of the long-term irreversible effects on environmental release."

Mr Abel says Crop & Food has given the precision-breeding technique a fancy
name, but it is still GM and would be regarded as this by an international
agreement between countries to manage international trade of live GM
organisms.

Dr Conner says the random insertion issue is already present in all crop
plants through other advanced breeding techniques and is not a new issue to
be concerned about.

Precision breeding is being seen as valuable for any crop and particularly
those that are vegetatively propagated such as potatoes and fruit trees.

Crop & Food estimates it could be a year or two before precision-bred
cultivars of potato are ready for field testing.

[www.stuff.co.nz]

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