By: Shawn Lawrence
AGBIOTECH
All eyes on Saskatoon as ABIC comes home
The Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC), a made in Canada event, has returned to its birthplace, beautiful Saskatoon, SK. Taking place September 12th to September 15th at TCU place, ABIC is an international conference devoted to science and business development in agbiotech, where scientific and industry leaders gather from all over the world to address agricultural biotechnology and its impact on world agriculture from meeting the growing demand for food and feed production, to the development of sustainable biofuels. “It is exciting to have ABIC back in Saskatoon for 2010 because it is a time when our agbiotech community is experiencing a rebirth. The age of genomics, market demand for green products and global concern about climate change has created a new energy in our scientific and business community,” states ABIC Foundation chair, Jerome Konecsni. This enthusiasm is reinforced says Konecsni by unprecedented spirit of collaboration 12 BIOTECHNOLOGY FOCUS JULY/AUGUST 2010
and a collective determination to seize a unique opportunity brought about by what has been described as the “perfect storm” of global challenges. As the first president of Ag-West Biotech and now the co-chair of the ABIC Sponsorship committee, Dr. Murray McLaughlin knows the history of the conference and understands the significance of it being back in Saskatoon. Through Ag-West Biotech (now Ag-West Bio, was the founder of the ABIC conference series), he was personally instrumental in getting ABIC off the ground. “There really wasn’t a conference around agriculture and biotechnology that looked at it from a global perspective. We felt it was time to develop a conference or establish an international conference for agriculture, that’s what we structured for the first conference in 1996 and it just kind of built from there,” he said. The ABIC Conference was started in 1996 in Saskatchewan. Following on the success of the 1996 conference, a second conference in 1998 led to the formation of the ABIC Foundation. The Foundation was set up to ensure continued success of the ABIC series, and, to ensure ongoing opportunities for continuous learning and networking within the international agbiotech community. Since then, the conference has been held in Toronto (2000); Saskatoon (2002); Cologne, Germany (2004);
Melbourne, Australia (2006); Cork, Ireland (2008); and more recently in Bangkok, Thailand (2009). In response to requests to hold the conference on an annual basis, the conference ended its biannual circuit, and became an annual event beginning with the 2006 conference. “Having the 10th conference here, I think it’s nice to see where we were in the mid90’s when we were first really talking about biotechnology and what the opportunities were going to be, to how it is now where biotechnology has really taken over the farming crops that we grow, and we just continue to see a lot more knowledge, a lot more capabilities and information out there today by using the tools of biotechnology that 16 years ago we probably wouldn’t have even dreamt. Technology today has allowed us to move much more rapidly.” He adds that getting it back into Saskatoon, is a way to let the people of Saskatoon and of Saskatchewan know that this conference that was established in the community is alive and well and making things in the agricultural community better because of it. “We’re definitely seeing a conference that was established here in Canada become a global phenomenon.” Not surprisingly, due to its Canadian heritage ABIC conferences continue to enjoy strong representation from Canada in terms of its delegates and have continued to strengthen ties within the Canadian agbio sector. The ABIC Foundation remains incorporated in Saskatchewan, and its board is made up of Canadian directors who are able to keep strong ties with Canada. At the same time, the conference continues to build its international flavour by drawing in international directors from the regions where an ABIC conference has been held, or will be held. “I think if you look at Canada from the agricultural side, we definitely are a leader, and this conference has helped in bringing it all together,” states Dr. McLaughlin. “We’ve built up a strong base on both the crop side and animal side.” ABIC 2010 co-chair, president and CEO of Ag-West Bio, Wilf Keller echoes McLaughlin’s thoughts. “The conference has strong ties to Canada, and to Saskatoon. It’s definitely an indication of where we rank globally in the agbiotech sector. We are very much a leader, and you only have to look at the ag-bio cluster we have here in Saskatoon. I think Canada has embraced new crop technologies such as GMO crops; we’re among the leaders in acreage and one of the major players in this new technology. We’ve certainly embraced
