Keynote Address delivered at the Inter-disciplinary Dialogue on
"Malthus & Mendel: Population, Science and Sustainable Food
Security", held in Madras on 28-31 January 1998, M.S. Swaminathan Foundation,
Chennai, India
The title of the session, Science and Sustainable Human
Development,
gives one a great deal of latitude in what one talks about. I would
like to present you with that I found as a conundrum that runs through the
question of "Will biotechnology play a significant role in
alleviating the poverty, malnutrition and the environmental damage that
threatens us well into the middle of the next century?
We have Malthus and the propositions, we have Mendel and the effects
of information and discovery. I would suggest that genetics on its
own was not the only factor that achieved results in the Green
Revolution. It was part of it, but there were other factors also,
like the use of fossil fuel for various things, higher energy for
transport, energy for making chemicals and fertilisers, for pumping water,
chemicals for weed and pest control. The use of these other inputs caused
a number of problems green house gases, the fuel crisis and in the middle of the
last decade, social unrest, the salination of soils. So in one case, we
have a technology, whose simplifying features allow production, but also invoke
other consequences.
When we come to molecular genetics, its potential to alleviate hunger only
represents a small part of the whole process. So, here is a situation
similar to conventional genetics, we need amplifiers. And what are these
amplifiers going to do? The targets of molecular genetics are the alleviation of
poverty, of malnutrition and of natural damage. But some of these things
are actually caused by, or at least exaggerated by the amplifiers of the
previous technology. Our first lesson will be not to make that happen
again. We have to ensure that pesticide and energy use is reduced.
We are going to need a new set of amplifiers to maximise productivity, but
we have to cast our net much more widely to look for them. A
multi-disciplinary approach is necessary to apply molecular technology to a
problem. The disciplines involved represent one ring of
amplification. That ring of amplification should be surrounded by the ring
of science.
Let me deal with the ring of disciplines first. The actual molecular
technology alone does not give you answers and insights which will allow you to
use your information to increase productivity. You have to align the
disciplines of physiology, biochemistry and nearly all the biological
disciplines. How do we understand the mechanism of control of polygenic
traits? At the moment we deal with essentially very nearly, site-specific
expressions of single genes while most of the traits we are going to be
interested in are polygenic in nature. Let us come through the study of
genomics an area, which is going to involve the whole nature of allied sciences,
together with the real key of transgenics, per se, rather that the use of
genomics in better breeding, etc. So, now we have the potential of halving
anything that ranges from a suitable transept plant, in which characteristics
are fitted in for salt resistance, increased productivity stressed hormones.
It is very difficult to identify problems bottom up. Conventionally,
when you use basic science, you are trying to solve a problem top down,
push-pull whether it is a technology looking for a home or a technology to solve
a problem. We know the price, we probably know the use, but do we measure
it in terms of success and how do we value it? Measurement in the Green
Revolution period was simply on a per hectare basis. It is much more than
a problem of agriculture only. Environment, economics, social moves, all
these are integrated in some systems that aid problems in a meaningful
fashion. These suggest a measurement of whether what we are doing is
successful or not. By success, I do not mean economic success alone.
Talking of the interface between the social and
biological sciences is an excellent start. We cannot divorce them again as
we have done before.
We can look at the environments and say, a field, a watershed, a seascape, a
mountain range - and think that these are very compact. The elements, both
abiotic and biotic, are complex systems. And here it is that one begins to
take heart, because as one works, the rise of new ideas in technologies in
fields away from underpinning biology, there have been tremendous improvements,
increases in knowledge, the area is diverse. Data is positioned and now
assists prediction and verification through the techniques of artificial
intelligence, modelling, and all these things are eventually used in decision
support systems.
There have been very significant, profound changes in the way in which we
analyse data, the recognition that data is mostly non-linear rather than
linear. We have factual data and numeric data. These two can now be
brought together. Before, people who were traditionally in statistics
would not talk to people in information sciences. Aided by biology, they
are now coming together.
These are the things going on which are not traditionally associated with
agriculture biology but can have tremendous impact if we bring them in and use
them to formulate and help us solve these complex problems. For example,
the oceanography biology is a geographical information system. I have had
great pleasure watching Kenya develop its GIS.
What will be the multipliers for the new technology? How do you recognise
them how do you bring them in and how do you see them? That is the challenge for
the end of this century, for the beginning of the next, and people will miss the
boat if they do not make a determined effort to use these technologies to solve
problems. A warning has to be given that we need to go for the brightest
of the bright.
Malthus made a mathematical prediction. He made two assumptions that
population exhibits geometric growth, true in some situations and that
agriculture production only increases in an arithmetic way. We know that
this is not true. Mendel made predictions in areas of competition,
cultivation and production. How accurate those were, we have no
idea. I suggest we start getting our act together with the accelerated
techniques. Then we will be better able to advance the rate of adoption of
technologies and make sure that technologies are adopted effectively and measure
what their impact really is.
With thanks to Dr M.S. Swaminathan and his colleagues
for making this transcript available
The
Doyle Foundation