Farmers have to dismantle laws banning the growing of GM canola in Australia, the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology says.
Its national president, Claude Gauchat, made the call while commenting on the first articles of a nine-part series published in the latest issue of Agricultural Science, the institute's journal.

Australian agriculture was urged in the article to embrace the "genomic age" as a vital tool for its future survival.

Mr Gauchat said the institute had convened a panel of scientific experts to review the range of GM opportunities in cropping, cotton, pastures and livestock, whose reports will be printed over two issues of the journal.

"Research organisations are well advanced in the new science of genomics and many countries have clearly demonstrated the benefits of using GM crops, since their commercial release in 1996. A decade later, 102 million hectares of GM crops are planted worldwide," he said.

Mr Gauchat cautioned, however, that Australia's future was being seriously curtailed by the current moratorium on planting GM crops in all States except Queensland and NT.

A complex national regulatory scheme had been established to maintain rigorous scientific assessment of GM issues with regard to health, safety and the environment which did not need the additional State restrictions, he said.

"The irony is that the long-term drought has placed increasing pressure on Australian agriculture, which could have benefited considerably from drought-resistant GM research. Export opportunities are being lost as markets such as the EU open their doors to GM canola imports as a possible bio-fuel," Mr Gauchat said.

More than 80 per cent of North American canola production was genetically modified. The key benefit was herbicide tolerance which allowed weeds to be controlled more effectively and prevent weed seed contamination in harvested crops.


[nqr.farmonline.com.au]