Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate.

  • Walgate, Robert
Date:
[1990]
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Miracle or menace? : biotechnology and the third world / by Robert Walgate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    68 Miracle or menace? Tapping on a rubber plantation in Malaysia: biotechnology could clone more productive trees, to help natural rubber producers attack the growng market for rubber substitutes. /Trygve Bolstad!Panos Pictures • Helping to conserve genetic resources. Classical breeding is difficult with trees as it requires both space and long periods of time — up to tens of years — for the trees to mature, flower and seed. After 40 years' work, classical tree-breeding has its successes: for example, the Oxford Forestry Institute has identified strong populations and individual trees of several tropical species, and is now providing breeding populations to developing countries. The cost of the research has been US$8 million; but if countries use the improved material at the current rate of planting unimproved samples, the benefit by the year 2000 is estimated at US$1.5 bilHon [13]. Biotechnology can help by rapid micropropagation and multiplication of particularly good tree specimens. Culture of virus-free tissue and anther culture for rapid breeding-in of desirable traits would be very useful in reforestation. Regeneration from anther and pollen culture has been achieved — in the laboratory — for several woody species including Cojfea arabica and rubber [14]. Biotechnology can also help by surveying the genomes of a population of trees and finding correlations between genes — or gene products — and useful adult characteristics. Then the genes — or products — could be sought in the juvenile trees with molecular techniques. Cloning work is under way in many countries — including
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