Dr' Nancy Terryn

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Plants for the 21st Century
Dr. Nancy Terryn Prof. Em. Marc Van
Montagu Institute Plant Biotechnology for
Developing Countries Website http//www.ipbo.rug
.ac.be
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy,
of which the far greater part of the members are
poor and miserable. -- Adam Smith The Wealth of
Nations, 1776
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FAO - World Map on Food Availability
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What will be needed for thecrops for the future?

• Creating Value by using Genetic Engineering
• Environmentaly Friendlier Agriculture

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How will we obtain thesecrops for the future?

• Add genes conferring the desired traits
• Use molecular tools to assist breeding programs

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1. Create Value with Genetic Engineering

• Especially important for developing countries
  create superior crops and products with higher
  value for the farmers.
• Input Traits
• Biotic stresses Insect resistance Nematode
  resistance Striga resistance Tolerance towards
  bacterial, fungal and viral infections
• Abiotic stresses Better adaptation towards
  drought- salinity-cold, low nutrients, water
  logging, heavy metals

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1. Create Value with Genetic Engineering
Physical Traits Maturity Plant architecture Pod
shattering Shelf life Output Traits Content and
quality of starch, protein, oil, nutritional
elements BUT in a way that it is for the
advantage of the farmers, not multinationals
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April 5th 2002

• Efficient use of plant genome data offers
  unprecedented potentials for crop improvement

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japonica (left) and indica (right) subspecies of
rice
Sequenced by
Syngenta's Torrey Mesa Research Institute
(TMRI) and Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI)
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Gene Expression by cDNA-AFLP
S
Early G2
Late G2
M
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2. Environmentaly Friendlier Agriculture

• Low input agriculture both for developed and
  developing countries
• Less irrigation
• low use of rapidly degradable herbicides and
  pesticides
• Better nutrition uptake and improving soil
  fertility

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Bacterial Endophytes

• Benefical relationships with the host
• Increase plant growth
• Improve resistance to environmental stress
• Biological nitrogen fixation in non-legumes
• Biocontrol agents
• Direct antagonism of microbial pathogens
• Inducing systemic resistance (priming)

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What Is Needed to Make This Possible ?
A better integration of fundamental and applied
research

• Intensify Fundamental Research
• Start up Companies for Developing Challenging
  Prototypes
• Established Industry for Turning these prototypes
  into Products and Commercialising them

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What Is Needed to Make This Possible ?
Who will do it ? With what Money ?
A network of institutes, universities, centers
that can use the molecular technology of the
developed Countries to construct in the
developing countries the improved crops so badly
needed. Foundations, charities, governments.
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What Is Needed to Make This Possible ?

• Prepare globally for
• the science
• the technology
• the economy
• the public acceptance of the changes

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Learning without thought is labor lost Thought
unassisted by learning is perilous Confucious
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