Biotechnology and the Food Supply Proceedings of a Symposium (1988) / Chapter Skim
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5 Biotechnology: Its Potential Impact on Interrelationships Among Agriculture, Industry, and Society
5 Biotechnology: Its Potential Impact on Interrelationships Among Agriculture, Industry, and Society
Pages 75-106
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From page 75... ...
Together, these as yet unrealized technical changes are likely to dwarf the so-called Green Revolution of the 1970s. In the United States, farmers and the general public tend to view the new biotechnologies favorably.
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From page 76... ...
This was in part a result of lower levels of funding, but was also due to the greater difficulties of working with plant cells and the strong applied character of the plant sciences! Conventional plant breeding -- what we may refer to as the old biotechnologies -- has proceeded with some help from Mendelian genletics, but with a heavy and necessary dose of empiricism.
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From page 77... ...
This permits spraying for weeds without damaging the crop. Widespread use of this technique offers precision and control that is simply unavailable through culture techniques.
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From page 78... ...
Instead of centering on the improvement of plants in the field, plant cells could be treated as if they were microorganisms. The techniques of growth and fermentation of bacteria, already well known to certain segments of the food processing industry (especially cheese and bread .
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From page 79... ...
In principle, any commodity that is consumed in an undifferentiated or highly processed form could be produced in this manner. Similarly, though with greater difficulty, tissue culture techniques could be used to produce edible plant parts In vitro.
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From page 80... ...
The actual research was conducted in Britain in greenhouses. Palm oil production was increased 30% by using tissue culture techniques to clone high-yielding trees.
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From page 81... ...
Also important is the factory production of pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals using tissue culture techniques (e.g., Anderson et al., 1985; Breuling et al., 1985; Dixon, 1984; Misawa, 1985; Rosevear and Lambe, 1985; 81
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From page 82... ...
TABLE 1 Markets for Selected Plant Productsa Wholesale Estimated World Plant or Price,Demand, millions Compound Use/Product U.S.$/kgof U.S. $ Vinblastine Medication for 5,000 18-20b leukemia Jasmine Flavor; 5,000 0.5b fragrance Catharanthus Vincristine 5,000 18 20b Lithospermum Shikonin 4,500 c Digitalis Medication for 3,000 20-55b heart disorders Rose Otto Rose oil 2,800 12 Ajmalicine Medication for 1,500 5.25 circulatory problems Papaver Codeine 650 50b Pyrethrins Insecticide 300 20b Buchu Buchu of!
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From page 83... ...
Balandrin and colleagues link In vitro production with political instabilities: As the natural habitats for wild plants disappear and environmental and political instabilities make it difficult to acquire plant derived chemicals, it may become necessary to develop alternative sources for important plant products. There has been considerable interest in plant cell culture as a potential alternative to traditional agriculture for the industrial production of secondary plant metabolites.
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From page 84... ...
One ironic note is that the In vitro production may actually drive the price down too rapidly, given the fact that the market is small and easy to saturate (Curtin, 1983~. There are persistent, but unconfirmed rumors within the genetic engineering community that at least one U.S.
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From page 85... ...
The sugar solution is then piped to production plants in metropolitan areas. Finally, food is produced through massively scaled-up tissue cultures by using sugar solution as a medium and nutrient source for the plant material.
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From page 86... ...
It takes little imagination to realize that costs are likely to become competitive with conventional production methods when the product is a luxury good available only in limited quantities or when it is heavy and produced far from its point of consumption. In both instances, cell and tissue culture techniques offer significant advantages.
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From page 87... ...
When this process is applied to plant molecular biology, we can immediately see its importance. Plant molecular biologists are interested in understanding the ways in which plant genetic material is structured.
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From page 88... ...
A recent article appropriately entitled "Assembly Line Plants Take Root" provides an example: The biggest thing keeping costs up -- and therefore holding tissue culture propagation back-is the amount of labor needed to run a tissueculture lab.... Automation is one solution to the problem of high labor costs.
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From page 89... ...
Worldwide, an estimated 22 million people depend on the rubber industry. If In vitro production of rubber or the use of tissue culture to improve guayule (a rubber source that grows in temperate climates)
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From page 90... ...
Similar effects can be expected for other tropical commodities. The market restructurings likely to be caused by significant In vitro production or the collapse of existing markets would be enormous.
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From page 91... ...
Among the possible effects are geographic shifts in the location of the production process, the demise or growth of secondary industries, secondary effects that result from the inability of the former producing countries to afford importation of various manufactured goods, and the decline of certain consumer goods industries in the Third World as demand declines. Finally, it requires no crystal ball to realize that a very significant effect of the new biotechnologies in agriculture may be a shift in the geographic location of agricultural production from the Third to the First World.
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From page 92... ...
, the Third World has been characterized by "scientific domination." As a result, even in Third World nations with scientific communities, few scientists are capable of pursuing the paths opened by the new biotechnologies. Only a few Third Woricl nations have the critical mass of scientists necessary to engage in genetic engineering; a somewhat larger number may be able to use tissue culture techniques for selected crops.
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From page 93... ...
The biorevolution will not be spatially limited, even if factory production of food remains an elusive goal for some. In principle, recombinant and tissue culture techniques can be used and, in practice, applied to an increasing extent to all crops.
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From page 94... ...
Tissue culture might be used to reduce production costs of field-grown crops, thereby making competition from In vitro production that much more difficult. However, although this might slow down the changes, it would in no way prevent the loss of millions of jobs in agricultural production.
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From page 95... ...
Every time that we eat fresh foods, we ingest unknown quantities of unknown soil bacteria. Do these play a role in our diet?
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From page 96... ...
30-31~. Food products that incorporate genetic material from exotic sources, or entirely eliminate toxic substances, especially food products produced In vitro, would reduce the diverse range of ingredients in our food supply and perhaps eliminate many of them.
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From page 97... ...
Moreover, protection of such production facilities would be difficult and would necessitate undemocratic institutional forms. Given that some observers have encouraged In vitro production as a remedy for political turmoil, this problem presents both ironies and contradictions.
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From page 98... ...
Current forecasts for In vitro production pay little attention to the intricate and expensive basic scientific research that must still be conducted in order to modify even the simplest plant characteristics (e.g., studies to unravel the plant nutrition process and the relationship of some plant parts to the development of flavor in the edible parts) , the complex developmental research necessary to arrive at production prototypes, the difficulties of scale-up (e.g., Senior, 1986)
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From page 99... ...
Linkages between the chemical, pharmaceutical, seed, and food industries have aIreacly been formed. Concentrated production would also bring with it the possibility of deliberate or accidental contamination of the food supply; in a wool, it would actually reduce our food security.
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From page 100... ...
Pp. I-36 in Plant Cell Culture.
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From page 101... ...
1983. Isolation of agronomically useful mutants from plant cell cultures.
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From page 102... ...
1983. Harvesting profitable products from plant tissue culture.
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From page 103... ...
1984. Plant tissue culture: Achievements and prospects.
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From page 104... ...
Milestones in plant tissue culture systems for the production of secondary products.
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From page 105... ...
Frontiers of Plant Tissue Culture. International Association for Plant Tissue Culture, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
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