The St. Louis region’s industrial and intellectual strengths in plant sciences and genetic research may benefit an unlikely and far-flung set of partners: small-scale farmers in the African nations of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa.
St. Louis-based Monsanto will be providing its highly advanced understanding of plant genes and breeding to a complex public-private partnership that was announced last week in Kampala, Uganda.
Monsanto scientists work at the forefront of decoding the genetic sequencing of plants. This genetic map can assist plant breeders to more reliably and
rapidly identify desirable traits – such as tolerance of drought conditions – when selecting plants for sexual breeding programs.
The international partnership that includes Monsanto aims to develop drought-tolerant varieties of maize (corn) that will be made available to small-scale farmers in participating African countries without paying royalties for using the intellectual copyright.
The need for innovation in African agriculture due to recurring droughts was expressed by East African journalist Elias Biryabarema, reporting on the partnership last week in Uganda’s Daily Mirror.
“Despite the potential for bountiful crop farming, the region is in fact more known for recurring acute food shortages (some verging on famine) and international appeals for relief than perhaps anything else,” Biryabarema writes.
“And now, a coalition of international organizations is trying to tackle the problem at the heart of this contradiction: frequent droughts. Because of dry spells becoming more elongated and pervasive and more areas becoming water-stressed, crops are getting parched, with communities losing entire seasons’ worth of harvests.”
“Climate change will only worsen the problem,” said The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) in its March 19 announcement of the new partnership.
“Following a press conference in Kampala on March 19, the partnership will spend the next five years trying to use drought-tolerant technologies to identify local corn varieties that survive more in dry conditions than others,” Biryabarema reported.
More than 300 million Africans depend on corn as their main food source, according to the AATF.
“Much of the corn farming in Uganda as it is elsewhere in the region is still rain-fed, particularly among smallholder farmers,” Biryabarema reported.
“But rains have been progressively decreasing and scarcely any of the farmers can afford the costly irrigation systems, making AATF’s Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), as the project is officially called, a profound and timely solution.”
Monsanto’s role will be to provide proprietary germplasm, advanced breeding tools and expertise. Additionally, Monsanto and BASF will provide drought-tolerance transgenes that they have developed through their collaboration.
The technology and intellectual property that Monsanto will provide falls under the general field of “marker-assisted” genetic breeding and biotechnology.
Marker-assisted breeding (or “genomics”) uses genetic fingerprinting techniques to assist plant breeders in matching molecular profile to the physical properties of the variety. This allows plant breeders to accelerate the speed of natural plant breeding programs, without exposure to the unpredictable health and environmental risks associated with genetic engineering techniques, according to the Soil Association, a UK-based organic farming group.
The Soil Association endorses such “marker-assisted” breeding research programs, because they “do not by-pass the sexual breeding process.” This is contrasted to “genetic engineering,” the artificial transfer of genetic material between or within species using recombinant DNA.
The new drought-tolerance technologies for maize have already been licensed without fee to AATF so they can be developed, tested and eventually distributed to African seed companies without royalty.
Also working with Monsanto and AATF will be the non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and research systems in the participating countries of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa.
Mpoko Bokanga, executive director AATF, said the involvement of local institutions, both public and private, will help to expand their capacity and experience in crop breeding, biotechnology and biosafety.
The collaboration between CIMMYT and national agricultural research systems has already yielded excellent gains in drought tolerance through conventional breeding. The partners in the WEMA project expect the combination of advanced breeding and biotechnology to bring even greater gains.
The partners estimate that the maize products developed over the next 10 years could increase yields by 20 to 35 percent under moderate drought, compared to current varieties. This increase would translate into about two million additional tons of food during drought years in the participating countries, potentially impacting 14 to 21 million people.
The first conventional varieties developed by WEMA could be available after six to seven years of research and development. The transgenic drought-tolerant maize hybrids will be available in about 10 years.
The AATF said that the respective national authorities will assess “the benefits and safety of these maize varieties … according to the regulatory requirements in each country.”
The AATF also said that the respective national research systems will be responsible “for country-specific implementation including project governance, testing, germplasm evaluation, seed production and distribution.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded an independent program at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health (University of Toronto) to assess and monitor social, cultural, ethical and commercial issues related to the WEMA Project. The independent organization will conduct annual audits of WEMA and “serve as an additional communication channel for stakeholders,” the AATF announced.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation contributed a total of $47 million to the WEMA effort.
To date, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $660 million as part of a broad agricultural development strategy to benefit small-scale farmers.
The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) is an African-led charity designed to facilitate and promote public/private partnerships for the access and delivery of appropriate proprietary technologies with potential to increase the productivity of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Visit www.aatf-africa.org.
