Notice also how the article describes the green revolutions of the 19th century, which were classical cases of inter-species cross-breeding using non-Mendelian plant breeding techniques. http://www.idrc.ca/evaluation/ev-115017-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
The CGIAR made two mistakes when setting up these large and expensive international research centres. First, they deliberately created scientific monopolies in the non-industrial world. All the money available for research on a particular crop would go to a single research centre. If two centres, such as CIAT and IITA, had over-lapping areas of research, they were carefully controlled to ensure that they did not compete with each other. The justification for this was to avoid unnecessary duplication. Research is expensive and, it was argued, duplication makes it doubly expensive. But, in fact, duplication in research is essential, because it provides the competition which is so necessary for good science. Nothing stimulates a scientist more than the thought that a rival scientist may anticipate him, and publish first. And nothing dulls a scientist more than the knowledge that he has no rivals. The scientists at the International Research Centres have few rivals, and those they do have are critically short of research funds. The second mistake was fundamental. It was the hope that these International Centres would produce new green revolutions. They did not. Indeed, they are a classic illustration of the completely false idea that you have only to throw enough money at enough scientists, in order to get new scientific breakthroughs. The original inspiration for good science comes from the scientists themselves, and usually from an individual scientist who, as often as not, is grossly under-funded, and probably working in an ancient laboratory that has been due for demolition for decades. Scientific inspiration does not come from money. Nor does it come from politicians, administrators, or bankers. The CGIAR produced no new green revolutions for one very simple reason. All the plant scientists employed by the international centres had been trained in the traditions of the Mendelian school of genetics. They believed that, when breeding plants for parasite resistance, you must first find a genetic source of resistance. If no source of resistance could be found, the resistance breeding could not even begin. You then had no choice. You had to use crop protection chemicals. For these members of the Mendelian school, there were really no other possibilities. The International Potato Centre (CIP) was possibly the worst in this respect. For years its scientists were telling the world that there was no such thing as horizontal resistance. Vanderplank's writings were ignored. John Niederhauser's work in Mexico was ignored. My own later, and much less important, potato work in Kenya was also ignored. John Niederhauser who, by rights, should have been in charge of CIP research, was rigorously excluded from its affairs. On the one occasion that I visited the place, I was shouted down during a scientific meeting. In fairness, however, I must comment that this was many years ago, and that CIP is now greatly improved. Nevertheless, the CGIAR International Centres, as a group, have a really dreadful record of ignoring horizontal resistance. Secondary Problems in the Green Revolution The miracle wheats and rices both ran into what the members of the Mendelian school called "secondary problems". This is because there are vertical resistances in the miracle wheats and rices, and these resistances fail periodically. On one occasion in Mexico, many tons of special fungicide had to be airlifted from Europe, at huge expense, as an emergency measure, to save a large area of wheat whose vertical resistance had broken down. A large proportion of the research budgets of CIMMYT and IRRI are spent on "maintenance research" which is their euphemism for the production of new cultivars to replace those whose vertical resistances have failed. Rice has vertical resistance to one of its diseases, called "blast" (Piricularia oryzae), and one of its insect pests, called the brown plant hopper (Nilaparvata lugens). Blast disease has proved an intractable and recurring problem because of endless failures of vertical resistance. The brown plant hopper has proved even worse because, when the vertical resistance to it failed, the miracle rices were so susceptible that there were unheard of population explosions of this pest. There were so many hoppers around that they invaded neighbouring, resistant rice crops in huge numbers. These crops were often old, local landraces which had an adequate level of horizontal resistance to control normal infestations of brown plant hoppers. But their resistance was entirely inadequate to control this parasite interference, and the abnormal, and artificially induced, levels of infestation. It was at this sad and sorry point that subsistence farmers in the non-industrial world were advised, for the first time ever, to start spraying their rice crops with crop protection chemicals. However, there is a happy ending to this story. Peter Kenmore, an American entomologist working in the Philippines, introduced IPM methods (Chapter 14) to the rice farmers of this country. He has been dramatically successful in reducing the use, and the cost, of insecticides while, at the same time, increasing the yields of these rice crops. His success is an example to the rest of the world. And his success will be even greater when the rice breeders finally produce new varieties with high levels of horizontal resistance. Another problem is that the miracle wheats and rices have proved to be abnormally susceptible to a few diseases which were previously quite unimportant. The miracle wheats have little resistance to Septoria diseases, for example, apparently because these fungi have a low epidemiological competence in Mexico, where the wheats were bred and selected. These diseases are now of major importance in other parts of the world where the fungi have a considerably higher epidemiological competence. The miracle rices were selected in the Philippines and they too had abnormal susceptibility to parasites which either do not occur, or which have a low epidemiological competence, in that area. For example, some of the miracle rices could not be grown in India because of a bacterial blight, and a virus disease called "tungro". No New Green Revolutions Interestingly, the entire green revolution was based on two characters, the short straw of wheat, and the short straw of rice, which are both inherited in a Mendelian fashion. This, of course, was a tremendous boost for the Mendelian school of plant breeding. Suddenly, for the first time in half a century, the members of the Mendelian school had found characters whose inheritance was controlled by only a few genes, apart from resistance to parasites, that were of major economic and agricultural significance. In spite of the secondary problems, the dwarf wheats and rices were undoubtedly the two most important agricultural achievements of the second half of the twentieth century, and they were the result of Mendelian inheritance. More than ever, the Mendelian pedigree breeding methods became "mainstream" science. This simple fact has had two very profound consequences. First, it confirmed and prolonged the domination of plant breeding by the Mendelian school of genetics. The green revolution was claimed as a new triumph of this school. It should, perhaps, be regarded as the last gasp of the Mendelian school. It is possible, although rather unlikely, that a Mendelian character of major agricultural importance has still to be discovered. Crop science has had nearly a century in which to find such characters and, bearing in mind that virtually every crop geneticist was a member of the Mendelian school, they have not found many. Just short straw in wheat and rice, and vertical resistances. All other single-gene characters, such as seed and flower colour, are of quite minor economic significance. Secondly, no new green revolutions were produced by the expensive, monopolistic, international research centres because no one could find even one new Mendelian character that could make such a revolution. If we are to have new green revolutions as, indeed, we probably can, and will, they are more likely to emerge from quantitative genetics, and from breeding plants for quantitative resistance which is durable, complete, and comprehensive. There have been other green revolutions, in the past, although they were never called this. The development of sugar beet from fodder beet (Chapter 2) in the nineteenth century created an entirely new crop, and entirely new beet sugar industries, in many temperate countries. The breeding of sugarcane, which started in the late nineteenth century, had just as dramatic an effect on sugarcane production as did short straw on wheat and rice cultivation. The development of hybrid maize in the United States, and later most of the world, was even more important. Similarly, the breeding of new soybean varieties transformed an insignificant crop into the largest crop of all in the United States. These developments all depended on quantitative genetics. On the few occasions when Mendelian characters were employed, they were a positive nuisance, because they provided vertical resistance to parasites, and nothing else. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
