China treads a careful path towards biotech future

Plant scientists see China as a global leader for the future. The country has set agricultural biotechnology as a research priority, with spending estimated at around $200m this year and rising fast. Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications, says the development of genetically modified crops "is primarily as an issue of food, feed and fibre security" for the Chinese leadership. Commercial considerations come well behind security as a motive for the country's agribiotech programme, which employs an estimated 2,000 scientists. But even in China the route to GM crops is not straightforward. The government is far from united in its commitment to GM. Some officials in the agriculture ministry are more interested in building exports of non-GM crops, particularly soya, to markets where there is strong consumer resistance to biotech foods. And the State Environmental Protection Administration co-operates with China's surprisingly vigorous Greenpeace organisation, whichis campaigning against GM crops. Chinese farmers have grown insect-resistant "Bt" cotton since 1996, when the commercial planting of GM crops also started in north America. Today, almost 70 per cent of China's cotton comes from GM plants. Jikun Huang, director of the Centre of Chinese Agricultural Policy in Beijing, says GM cotton has benefited 6m Chinese farmers through increased yields and greatly reduced insecticide use. However, Monsanto, the company that pioneered the worldwide commercialisation of Bt cotton, has not benefited as much as it had hoped from China. The country introduced its own Bt cotton, developed at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, at the same time as the Monsanto product arrived. Originally the American company had 70 per cent of the Chinese market, says Mr Huang, but last year the Chinese products overtook it. "Monsanto [executives] are not happy," Mr Huang observes. "They complain that the government limited them to a few provinces and they complain that they cannot control their own varieties in China." Although cotton is still the only GM crop grown commercially in China, a dozen others are being field tested. The main focus of attention is rice, the country's principal food crop. Four types of Chinese-developed GM rice - three to prevent insect damage and one to resist bacterial blight - have undergone extensive field trials yet none has won a commercial production licence, in spite of a series of applications going back to 1998. Environmental campaigners are fighting hard to prevent the commercial planting of biotech rice in China - and may delay approval for a few more years - but the crop's proponents are confident that the food security arguments and GM's agricultural benefits will win the argument eventually. It might then be adopted widely in Asia. However, GM soya, one of the key biotech crops in the Americas, is not likely to be planted commercially in China for a long while. While the country imports large amounts of GM soya, the agriculture ministry perseveres with its policy of growing only non-GM soya, for export at premium prices to Europe, South Korea and Japan. Although research is getting under way, GM soya will not be commercialised until China has its own varieties, Mr Huang says. "Biotech crops in China depend on what technology is developed in the country." "Source":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=12153&start=1&control=228&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1]

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