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China tightens controls on gene modified crops

Ch. Prashanth Reddy

Recently in Beijing

CHINA, which has been the first Asian country to commercialise genetically modified plants, has now become more stringent and critical in evaluating the environmental and bio-safety aspects of transgenics.

The Chinese Government is now setting up a centre to monitor the environmental effects of the transgenic crops, according to Prof. Jialin Yu of the National Laboratory for Agrobio-technology, Beijing Agricultural University.

This critical evaluation follows the Japanese rejection of the Chinese made soya sauce in April this year on the ground that it was prepared with genetically modified soyabeans imported from the US. Today, many European countries as well as Japan are ask ing China to certify that its food products are bereft of transgenic material.

Prof. Yu, however, said no adverse effects of transgenic plants were witnessed in China so far. Regardless, the Government regulations pertaining to transgenic crops, particularly food crops, had become more stringent of late.

On the other hand, China was conducting extensive research for producing transgenic plants. It was now ready for the commercialisation of genetically modified maize. There were also reports that China had begun construction of a $36-million facility in n ortheast Jilin province to produce pest-resistant crops.

As per the proceedings of the first Asian Conference on Plant Pathology held in Beijing in the last week of August, research on the production of pest-resistant crops was being held at various Chinese institutes and universities. These included the Fujia n Agricultural University, Shandog Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Zhongshan University, China Agricultural University, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The research in these organisations pertained to the development of pest-resistant crops and transgenics of rice, wheat, papaya, potato, cabbage, Chinese pear and cucumber. In particular, research was being done for the production of transgenic papaya pl ants resistant to papaya ringspot virus, for obtaining virus-free sweet potato and for inducing viral gene-mediated resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus in wheat.

At the National Laboratory for Agrobio-technology, research was being done on tomato and chilli pepper. Prof. Jialin Yu said the transgenics of chilli pepper was ready for commercialisation. The research on tomato was being done on two aspects - one was to produce disease-resistant crop and the other was aimed at producing tomatoes which would have a longer shelf-life.

On the other hand, at the Institute of Plant Virology of the Fujian Agricultural University, emphasis was placed on regeneration and culture of large number of transgenic rice plants with different phenotypes, and the assay of relationship between the ex pression of viral genes and the phenotype of transgenic plants.