Une bio-économie basée sur les OGM ? par Marc Van Montagu | Liege Creative, 06.02.13

Parole d’expert

Une bio-économie basée sur les OGM ?

Marc VAN MONTAGU, Université de Gand | IPBO (Institute for Plant Biotechnology Outreach)

En collaboration avec Bioliège

Avec le soutien de :

Une bio-‐économie basée sur les OGM ?

LIEGE CREATIVE -‐ mercredi 6 février 2013 -‐ 18h30 château de Colonster

Ins6tute of Plant Biotechnology Outreach (IPBO)

Websites: hBp://www.ipbo.ugent.be hBp://www.psb.ugent.be hBp://www.eG-‐central.org

hBp://www.prri.net Email : [email protected]

Prof. Em. Marc Van Montagu Chairman, IPBO, President EFB, President PRRI

Une bio-économie basée sur les OGM? – 06/02/2013


1912 Acetone from potatoes

Credit: Patricia Cummings

What are we wai6ng for?

•  100 years ago – We are running out of coal, we need biotechnology!

•  Today – We are running out of oil, we have the tools for high yielding biomass produc:on


Short rotaQon plantaQons for fuel and fiber

•  Wood producing plants •  CO2 sinking into cell walls

Charles Steinmetz, the electronics genius of General Electric told to Carl Bosch (IG Farben): You can make indigo cheaper than God, you may make rubber cheaper than God, but you will never make cellulose cheaper than God.

1936

What are we wai6ng for?


Plants for Life


Science and Technology for a Sustainable Agriculture

Food & Feed ProducQon

Sustainable Industry

Environmental RemediaQon

Understanding the molecular basis of plant biology and ecology and translaQon of this knowledge into field based soluQons

Molecular tools for capturing the value of tropical

rain forest


Discover Innovate Communicate

Public sector vision

Poli6cal, financial, private sector

support

Everybody’s duty


Biotech crop history

1904, Agrobacterium tumefaciens

1974, Ti Plasmid, Gent

1990’s genomics

1996 Commercial launch

Tradi6onal Plant Breeding DNA is a strand of genes. TradiQonal plant breeding combines many genes at once

Plant Biotechnology Using Agrobacterium-‐mediated gene transfer you can add a single gene to the strand

A single gene is transferred

10,000 years of gene6c modifica6on


Inbred parental corn lines

+

Hybrid vigour

P1 P2

F1

ProducQon of Hybrid Crops


Power of Novel Methods in Mass Spectrometry for Proteomics

•  in micro sequencing •  in detecQng protein modificaQons •  protein turnover •  BiosyntheQc pathway analyses


Systems Biology: Outstanding Developments

• Metagenomics • FuncQonal genomics • Transcriptomics • Proteomics

• Metabolomics

Explosion of new informa6on

Crea6on of new knowledge

Genera6on of new products

POLITICAL, FINANCIAL, PRIVATE SECTOR SUPPORT

PUBLIC SECTOR VISION


Popula6on growth

1945 2 billion 1998 6 billion 2006 Urban Popula6on exceeds rural popula6on 2011 7 billion 2050 9-‐10 billion


Intensive Agriculture Under Pressure

•  Rio+20 asks sustainable agriculture

•  Society asks limits:

–  appropriate balance between profit, planet and people

–  sustainable soil use, nature conservaQon, recreaQon, water management, and landscape conservaQon

Oil palm plantaQon, Malaysia


Final soluQon is becer governance but what can R&D bring?

Molecular breeding and decent seed

supply

We will not succeed without

GM Crops


Phytophthora Resistant Potatoes

•  Breeding of resistant culQvars (introgression of 2 resistance genes took 35 years

•  17 resistance genes have been cloned •  GM potatoes expressing resistance genes show excellent disease tolerance in field trials.


Alterna6ve (orphans) crops:

Lathyrus sa4vus

Chickpea

Cereals

Drought in Ethiopia


Explore the poten6al of non-‐food crops

Miscanthus Sweet sorghum Castor bean


Bio-‐fuel from Agriculture Waste

•  Bloomberg New Energy Report 2010 •  The second generaQon enzymes produced by Novozymes

(Dk), Danisco (Dk) and DSM (Neth for digesQon of agriculture waste and conversion to ethanol.

•  They can allow to replace 62% of the Gasoline imported by Europe.

•  CreaQng 1 Mi jobs, generaQng 31 Bi € rather than a spending of 40 Bi € for buying abroad.


Plants for Knowledge


Are GMOs

Dangerous for health?

Dangerous for the environment?

Unnatural?

Of no interest nor advantage to our society? A monopoly of 6 mulQnaQonals?


Amer 25 years of field trials and 12 years of regular consumpQon

NO!

Not a single health incident that could be acributed to GMO has

been reported. There is no research evidence that shows consumpQon of GMOs to be

harmful to our health.

NO! GM crops are not more

harmful for the environment than any other crop. On the contrary, there are clear

ecological benefits, at least when placed in the whole

picture of the role of agricultural systems in maintaining biodiversity.


Lessons from Molecular Evolu6on

•  The living world is one large gene-‐pool of funcQonal and pseudogenes

•  This gene-‐pool is permanently evolving, this is the base of evoluQon

•  Nature is one big geneQc laboratory

•  It is very misleading to talk about human gene, pig gene, rat gene etc.


Price Tag for Introducing GM Plants

OverregulaQon and unnecessary tesQng make that:

•  no Small or Medium Enterprise

•  no developing country can afford to introduce a GM crop.

Only mulQnaQonals can proceed.


The danger of misinformaQon


Science CommunicaQon

Science versus

InformaQon Cocoons

• Galileo • VaccinaQon • UFOs and space visitors

• Horoscope • Ghosts and communicaQon with the dead

Should society decide on the correctness of scientific findings?


Acceptance and Decisions Beliefs come first, the explana6on for the beliefs follows

The difference between true and false pacerns

How to avoid cogniQve bias pioalls?

Times Books, Henry Holt and Co., New York 2011


Difficulty to accept

ra6onal arguments “Ethic values” and feelings of disgust

GMOs Homophobia Racism Food aversions

Mark Lynas on BBC HARDtalk YouTube : hcp://youtu.be/s__p_zsSDJ8


21stCentury Plants will be GM-‐Plants


In a better Environment

Une bio-économie basée sur les OGM ? par Marc Van Montagu | Liege Creative, 06.02.13

Technology

Transcript of Une bio-économie basée sur les OGM ? par Marc Van Montagu | Liege Creative, 06.02.13