ABIC 2014 Saskatoon: the best of biotech!

ABIC 2014 SASKATOON:

the best of biotech!

An exciting program is in place for the 14th edition of the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC 2014), hosted by Ag-West Bio in Saskatoon, SK from October 5–8. ABIC™ is the premier global meeting that promotes innovation in bioscience to ensure sustainable food, feed, fi bre and fuel security as the climate changes.

ABIC 2014 will provide a forum for discussion and analysis of several themes and issues that are familiar to everyone involved in biosciences. Each of the four days of the conference will focus on a di erent theme: • Global Challenges and Issues related to Agricultural Productivity • Innovation for Global Food Security • Strategies for Agriculture Innovation • Leadership for Successful Innovation

Wilf Keller, Chair of the ABIC Foundation and Ag-West Bio’s President and CEO, says that science will play a greater role than ever in creating solutions, as climate change creates unstable weather patterns, and the population grows. “The ABIC 2014 themes were chosen to refl ect the most prevalent questions within the industry, such as, how can the biosciences mitigate some of the predicted challenges?”

ABIC 2014 SPEAKER HIGHLIGHTS

The 2014 steering committee is proud of this year’s program, which brings high-calibre speakers from around the world to Saskatoon. Three of the 42 plenary and session speakers presenting at the conference are highlighted below.

Ingo Potrykus

Every year in developing countries, more than two million children die from standard infectious diseases and approximately 500,000 children become blind because of vitamin A defi ciency. In an e ort to combat this diet-based disease, Dr. Ingo Potrykus, Professor Emeritus of Plant Sciences at the Institute of Plant Sciences of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, developed Golden Rice.

Golden Rice looks and tastes like regular rice, but contains enough beta-carotene in a half-cup serving to meet 65% of a child’s daily Vitamin A requirements. Golden Rice has the potential to eliminate Vitamin A defi ciency, saving eyesight and lives.

To Potrykus’s immense frustration, Golden Rice has yet to save anyone. Because the rice was biofortifi ed with beta-carotene using genetic modifi cation, the anti-GMO lobby and regulatory hurdles have held up release of the rice to those who would benefi t most. “The science to develop Golden Rice took eight years,” says Potrykus. “Product development and deregulation, so far, has taken 15 years and is not yet over.”

Golden Rice was developed with the intent of improving food security in developing countries, and reaching subsistence farmers in rice-dependent cultures, particularly in remote areas. The licensing agreement pioneered by Potrykus and his team identifi es a cut-o level of income that separates free access to the technology for humanitarian purposes from commercial use of the technology.

“The progress in science, and the projected impact on agriculture and food is breathtaking,” says Potrykus. “But e ective use of biotechnology is locked by GMO opposition and extreme precautionary regulation. The future depends upon whether society listens to activists or science.”

Julie Borlaug

No one knows better than Julie Borlaug the value of gaining public support for biotechnology projects. As the Associate Director of External Relations for the Borlaug Institute for Inter-

national Agriculture, she has seen fi rst-hand the need for innovative agricultural solutions in developing countries, as well as the heartbreaking delays that can be caused by a lack of public awareness or understanding.

As a keynote speaker at ABIC 2014, Borlaug will focus on the legacy of her grandfather, Dr. Norman Borlaug, known as the father of the Green Revolution, and credited with “having saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.”

Dr. Borlaug’s legacy includes improvement of wheat varieties, educating future generations of scientists, and creating alignment between policymakers, scientists, and the public and private sectors to ensure that agricultural advancement reaches farmers. In 1970, Norman Borlaug won the Noble Peace Prize for his work.

A key component of the Borlaug legacy is popularizing biotechnology as a tool in the fi ght against world hunger. “We need to reach beyond the agricultural and scientifi c community and instead address the public, including mothers, youth and groups who know nothing about agriculture or the needs of the developing world,” says Julie Borlaug.

Borlaug will not sugar-coat what she believes would be her grandfather’s response to the anti-science/anti-GMO movement: “He would be disgusted! These groups do harm by barring innovations that would be lifesaving, such as Golden Rice. My grandfather never understood their inability to see the environmental benefi ts of biotechnology, especially considering the reality of climate change.”

Nina Fedoro

“We live in a world whose major problems have no borders,” says Nina Fedoroff , a keynote at this year’s ABIC. “What aff ects developing nations a ects all of us. Helping them bridge the knowledge and technology gap helps us, too.”

Fedoroff is a Distinguished Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and Evan Pugh Professor at the Huck Institutes of Life Sciences at Penn State University. She is currently establishing a new centre for desert agriculture in Saudi Arabia. Researchers there will work with some of the most extreme conditions on earth to enhance knowledge and develop plant strains that can be used in regions that may become less hospitable to agriculture as climate change intensifi es.

Fedoroff is committed to increasing international collaboration and scientifi c communication. The role of biotechnology in agriculture is limited by the public’s perception of it, and the e ect that public perception has on government policies. As president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fedoroff worked to make knowledge available across borders, and also closer to home.

“I think people often fear–and even denigrate–what they do not understand,” she says. “We live in a world of faster technological change than humans have ever experienced. Since science is the fundamental source of the technological advancement, it isn’t surprising that it engenders negativity in some.”

Accumulating evidence that genetic modifi cation by molecular techniques is as safe as genetic modifi cation by older techniques (such as chemical mutagenesis), should translate to changes in the regulatory framework. This would reduce the regulatory burden and make it more economically feasible to bring GM crops to market. Such changes could also aid in the acceptance of biotechnology as a positive force for increasing food production on a global scale.

“In the best of worlds, governments would invest in helping academic scientists and small companies to test and bring GM products to market. Regulation should be on the properties of the product or organism created, not the methods by which it was created.”

… and much more

Topics at ABIC 2014 are diverse, ranging from regulations to emerging technologies, and include novel innovations such as 3-D printing of food (presented by David Irvin from Systems and Materials Research Corp. of Austin, TX) and genetically modifi ed mosquitoes to combat dengue fever (presented by Simon Warner of UK-based Oxitec Ltd).

Canadian speakers include Howard Wheater, Director of the Global Institute for Water Security in Saskatoon, who will address the links between agriculture and water security. “Land and water are intimately connected, so agriculture not only depends on water, but a ects water in many ways,” he says. The full program with speaker biographies can be viewed at www.abic.ca/abic2014. ABIC 2014 is hosted by Ag-West Bio, Saskatchewan’s bioscience industry association: www.agwest.sk.ca.

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