First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology

8. Outdoing evolution: biotechnology, botany, and business

8 Outdoing evolution: biotechnology, botany, and business I think that the world seed trade figure is probably something like 30 billion dollars annually. And this number, ifyou stop to think about it, simply represents a heck of a lot of DNA, the primary annual genetic input to the agricultural sector. Numero Uno. Not exactly a discretionary item. No agriculture without seeds. David Padwa, Agrigenetics Corporation (1982) In the future of ecology or bionomics, that science concerned with the determination of new varieties and species, when all the mystery of biological forces and of adaptation shall have been unraveled, it is quite probable that the exact characteristics of a neW variety or species may be predicted and predetermined at the will of the operator. Hyland C. Kirk (in U.S. House of Representatives 1906) The solutions are coming very fast now. In three years, we'll be able to do anything [with gene manipulations] that our imaginations will get us to. Mary-Dell Chilton, Ciba-Geigy Corp. (in Rossman 1984) It would be interesting to know the source of the Wellsian prescience apparent in the quotation from Hyland C. Kirk. Kirk's comments came in the course of congressional testimony during a hearing on proposed legislation that would eventually become the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Kirk doubtless wanted to emphasize the extent to which new plant varieties were the product ofhuman manufacture. Rediscovery ofMendelian genetics a few years earlier must have formed the basis for his anticipation of rapid advance in plant breeding. And according to Ciba-Geigy plant molecular biologist Mary-Dell Chilton, some eight decades later Kirk's vision of the future is close to being a reality. The recent emergence of the new biotechnologies promises qualitative improvements in the techniques of genetic manipulation used to produce new plant varieties. Conventional plant breeding has in First the seed fact been, quite literally, breeding. Recombination of genes has been achieved through the sexual mating of whole plants. Now, however, techniques such as protoplast fusion and recombinant DNA transfer allow direct access to a discrete piece of a plant's genome at the cellular and even the molecular level. It is becoming possible to change gene frequencies with a wholly unprecedented specificity, and such recombinations are no longer limited to organisms that are sexually compatible. New plant varieties are being engineered in the strongest sense of that word's connotations of precision and foresight. Chilton's buoyant "in three years, we'll be able to do anything" is a species of overstatement common among corporate biotechnologists. But general optimism as to the potential of the new genetic technologies is widely shared in the plant science community. Iowa State University plant breeder Kenneth J. Frey made biotechnology the subject of his 1984 presidential address to the American Society of Agronomy. He told the assembled ASA members, Biotechnology procedures that permit the easy asexual transfer of genes among microorganisms, when and if mastered for higher plants, hold the potential for transferring desired genes across species, genera, and perhaps family barriers. Let your imagination roam - the high lysine trait from the pigweed might be used to improve the quality of maize protein. The resistance of maize to wheat stem rust might be used to make wheat resistant to this disease. The gene for tolerance to Al[uminum] toxicity in wheat might make maize tolerant to Al[uminum] ... The future for agronomy is not only bright, but it has no foreseeable bounds. [Frey 1985=188-9] And, for Frey, a bright future for agronomists implies a bright future for the rest of us. For among the fruits of the new plant biotechnology will be "an enormity of crop production that may dwarf the accomplishments of the 'Green Revolution'" (Frey 1985:187). So we are confronted once again with the familiar language of miracle varieties and scientific revolution. And we are now promised that greener pastures lie just over the next petri dish. But if the past is indeed systematically connected to the future, we should now be in a position to critically analyze the current phase of technological innovation in light of prior experience . The threads that we have thus far followed through the history of plant improvement - the commodification ofthe seed, the changing division of labor between public and private research institutions, and the appropriation of plant genetic resources - remain the principal themes around which this analysis can be structured. Outdoing...