Transgenic poplars in China

from the March 10, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0310/p14s02-sten.html

Now, bioengineered trees are taking root

Transgenic poplars could make China a big player in lumber. But some experts worry about effects on nature.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Scattered across at least seven provinces in China are more than 1 million common poplar trees with an uncommon bite. They can kill the insects that nibble their leaves. Their unusual defensive system is a genetically engineered bomb: Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a naturally occurring toxin inserted into the tree's DNA. Other such transgenic species, such as the larch and walnut, are in the works, Chinese researchers report.

Such moves are shaking up the twin worlds of forestry and environmentalism. Transgenic trees are reaching the threshold of commercialization - a point bioengineered crops reached in the 1980s, observers say. This time, though, it's not the United States leading the charge, it's China.

Though little reported in the West, China's swan dive into large-scale transgenic forestry is essentially the first commercial-scale deployment of genetically engineered (GE) trees in the world, experts say. That could one day mean a potent new competitor to the lumber and paper industries. It also may mean that cutting-edge GE tree research in the US will fall behind, hobbled by regulation and public protest. It also puts decisions about a controversial - and, some say, potentially dangerous - technology into the hands of an authoritarian government, with less oversight and fewer technical controls than in the West.

"What the Chinese have done, planting [genetically engineered] trees across hundreds, maybe thousands, of acres, hasn't been done anywhere else in the world," says Yousry El-Kassaby, a forest geneticist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "It marks a shift in the center of gravity away from the US, where there's a lot of genetic engineering tree research, but much of it is restricted to the labs or very regulated small field trials."

The case for GE trees seems straightforward. Faster-growing species can produce more lumber and paper in shorter time, which makes them a cheaper raw material. Supertree plantations could also mean less disturbance of natural forests - an environmental plus.

Scientists can "develop faster-growing trees, trees that produce more biomass that can be converted to fuels, and trees that can sequester more carbon from the atmosphere or be used to clean up waste sites," said Spencer Abraham, then US secretary of Energy, last fall.

Proponents also tout the technology as something that can be used to return vanishing species such as the American chestnut to the American landscape, by modifying its genetic makeup to defeat a devastating blight.

A problem with pollen

But there's a big catch, experts warn. Trees are perennial plants that produce large quantities of pollen released far higher into the air than ordinary crops. This "gene drift" in crops has caused problems as large seed companies have sued US and Canadian farmers for illegally using GE seeds. The farmers claimed their crops were contaminated by drifting pollen, but to no avail. A study last year by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that seeds of traditional varieties of corn, soybeans, and canola "are pervasively contaminated" with low levels of DNA from genetically engineered varieties of those crops.

If DNA can spread so broadly from GE crops a few feet high, there's no telling what will happen with pollen from trees 50 to 100 feet high or more, experts say. For example: Pollen from GE conifer trees can blow more than a thousand miles, new research at Duke University shows.

The potential for genetic contamination of forests - and potential rewards from using GE trees - are enormous, experts say. "For the first time, we have the ability to put a bacteria or even a fish gene into a tree," says Robert Jackson, professor of biology and director of Duke University's Center on Global Change. "Some make that a moral issue. Is it morally right? Another question is: Is it smart - or, maybe, is it dangerous?"

Indeed, the idea of releasing GE trees into the wild sends shudders through Alyx Perry of the Southern Forests Network, a coalition of loggers, landowners, and environmentalists. "Our conclusion is that the genetically engineered trees will inevitably contaminate nongenetically engineered stands of trees."

That, in turn, could lead to millions of acres of infertile private timber, possibly lacking enough lignin (a wood-strengthening substance) needed to be saw timber, Ms. Perry says. Combined with internal pesticide production in pine and poplar trees in the wild, it could lead to forests unable to reproduce, produce food for animals, or create marketable timber.

In the US, at least 69 field-test permits are in effect for three GE tree species - pine, poplar, and walnut. Most of those occupy two acres or less, says the US Department of Agriculture. Under USDA rules, such trees are closely monitored and not permitted to reach the flowering and pollination stage. So far, just one GE variety, a Hawaiian papaya, has been approved to be grown commercially. But commercialization is moving forward. In January 2004, the USDA announced its "intention to update and strengthen" biotechnology regulations for GE organisms, which some say is a key shift. And field research trials for GE trees in the US, including those conducted by ArborGen, a forestry-research firm in Summerville, S.C., have surged since 1997. ArborGen has been approved to conduct dozens of field trials with pine and poplar species genetically engineered for altered fertility, lignin levels, and other features, USDA database records show.

"We certainly see that genetic engineering in a plantation setting ... could play a big part in meeting world demand," says Les Pearson, ArborGen's director of regulatory affairs. ArborGen's first tree is at least seven years away from commercialization, he adds. Others see GE trees coming sooner.

"Government and industry are basically looking at what they can do to finalize regulations to streamline commercial release," says Neil Carmen of the Sierra Club. "We're talking about potentially millions of acres of genetically engineered trees."

Insight from papaya

At least two other transgenic tree species, a plum and another papaya, are undergoing USDA review. More than 30 species of GE trees - including 20 species valuable for timber or paper and pulp - are being developed, Dr. Carmen says. Ironically, Hawaiian farmers say the approved GE papaya has already contaminated groves, he adds.

"The regulation of this whole thing is lagging the technology," says Roger Sedjo, director of the forest economics and policy program at Resources for the Future, a Washington policy think tank. "A lot of countries are pursuing research in the area and some of it is coming to fruition. What we don't have is a global standard."

In Brazil, for example, researchers have embarked on large-scale research to develop a GE eucalyptus tree. The idea is to make the slow-growing Australian native mature faster and resistant to disease.

"We're certainly not ready to understand all of the risks yet," says Duke's Dr. Jackson. "There is immense commercial pressure to move ahead with this. And frankly, it's pretty easy to outline the economic benefits, but much more difficult to outline the long-term costs and what they will be - and how long they'll last if things go wrong."

A forest of facts

Trees are the world's largest and oldest plants. They cover nearly a third of the world's land surface (excluding Antarctica and Greenland). They blanketed two-thirds of the surface before humans began to farm.

• The double-coconut palm in the Seychelles boasts the largest tree seed: 50 pounds.

• California boasts the world's tallest trees, the redwoods, and the oldest, bristlecone pines. The former can grow 360 feet tall. The latter have been known to live more than 4,000 years. The average city tree lasts eight years.

• By turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, trees replenish the atmosphere. Two mature trees can produce enough oxygen for a family of four.

• Over one year, a tree can absorb the carbon created by a car driven 26,000 miles.

Sources: World Book; United Nations; Earth Policy Institute; International Society of Arboriculture

Demand aid North’s forestry is due

Demand aid North’s forestry is due

Sault Star Editorial Staff

Tuesday, March 08, 2005 - 09:00

Editorials - Municipalities, MPPs and MPs across Northern Ontario should back NDP Leader Howard Hampton’s call for more than $150 million a year to help the region’s forestry sector.

Why not? As Hampton points out, the province has just announced more than $680 million in grants and tax credits to assist in growth of Casino Windsor, General Motors and film and television production. Ottawa earmarked an additional $200 million for GM.

Both levels of government argue this is a good investment in Ontario’s future, creating employment.

So what is Northern Ontario, chopped liver? How about employment and the economy north of the French River?

Loggers and pulp-mill workers have to feed their families, just as auto workers do.

But Hampton says that in the first year of the Liberals’ mandate in Ontario, the North has lost 6,000 jobs, mostly in the forest sector in communities such as Chapleau, Opasatika and Sturgeon Falls.

That kind of news doesn’t seem to inspire the Toronto media, however, so southern politicians act as though it never happened. If a tree-cutter’s job falls in the Northern Ontario forest and there is no one there from Toronto to hear him scream in frustration, has he made a noise? Apparently not.

Northern representatives had better start making so much noise that it is heard all the way to Queen’s Park and Ottawa.

Part of governments’ role is to provide infrastructure, and that’s what both upper levels need to do better in Northern Ontario. As Hampton says, assistance with plant modernization could help meet environmental goals at the same time as enhancing employment.

Helping make energy efficiency improvements and build co-generation plants could be especially significant, since provincial hikes in electricity prices have already badly hurt the forestry sector and worse is expected.

Partisan politics must be set aside, with leaders of all stripes supporting a call for greater investment in Northern Ontario. The region has lost ridings as the southern Ontario population burgeons, and representatives who are left need to shout louder to be heard.

This is not whining. It’s demanding what the North is due as part of the Ontario and Canadian fabric. Southern power brokers can’t be allowed to keep turning a deaf ear.(*)

Forestry in N Ont. needs support

Hampton seeks support for forestry

By Brian Kelly

Monday, March 07, 2005 - 09:00

Local News - The provincial and federal governments should contribute more than $150 million per year to help the forestry sector in Northern Ontario, says Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton.

If action is not taken soon, he warned, pulp and paper mills that are “close to the edge” in Kenora, Thunder Bay and Smooth Rock Falls could close and quash 2,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Hampton also called for a freeze on soaring electricity rates, which he said are crippling Northern industries that need vast amounts of power to run their operations.

“Major industries in Northern Ontario cannot afford to be paying five or six cents a kilowatt hour for their electricity and continue to remain in production,” Hampton said in an interview.

Speaking at a meeting in Sault Ste. Marie of the Ontario NDP’s Northern Council, the Rainy River MPP said industrial electricity costs have risen 30 per cent in the past four years. That spells trouble for Northern industries such as mining, steelmaking and forestry, Hampton said in a 35-minute speech. He told 50 delegates that 6,000 jobs, most of them in the forestry sector in communities such as Chapleau, Opasatika and Sturgeon Falls, were lost in the North during Premier Dalton McGuinty’s first year in office. No other part of the province saw as many jobs disappear, he said.

Since December, the provincial government has invested more than $680 million in cash and tax credits to help Casino Windsor, General Motors and film and television production in Ontario. The federal government chipped in another $200 million to aid GM’s $2.5 billion investment in its Ontario operations.

“Where are each of them when it comes to an investment strategy for the forest sector in Northern Ontario?”

Government dollars could target energy efficiency improvements and co-generation plants, Hampton said.

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton, who spoke to about 40 delegates Sunday morning, said his party will push the Liberals for industrial strategies for steel, pulp and softwood, agriculture and tourism.

“The idea of the government investing in some of these sectors and assisting in the plant modernization allows us to achieve environmental goals at the same time as we achieve employment possibilities,” he told reporters.

Hampton plans to take his campaign to many Northern communities with forestry operations, including the Sault, Chapleau and Espanola, during the next three to four months.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada and United Steelworkers of America, the two largest forestry-sector unions, are assisting with the NDP’s campaign. (*)

minds of plants

from the March 03, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s03-usgn.html

New research opens a window on the minds of plants

By Patrik Jonsson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

RALEIGH, N.C. - Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to approach them.

Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off.

The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future, based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit the redwoods of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival for millenniums - a journey that, for some trees, precedes the Parthenon.

As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence" acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory and enemies, and are often capable of forethought - revelations that could affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers.

Indeed, extraordinary new findings on how plants investigate and respond to their environments are part of a sprouting debate over the nature of intelligence itself.

"The attitude of people is changing quite substantially," says Anthony Trewavas, a plant

biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a prominent scholar of plant intelligence. "The idea of intelligence is going from the very narrow view that it's just human to something that's much more generally found in life."

To be sure, there are no signs of Socratic logic or Shakespearean thought, and the subject of plant "brains" has sparked heated exchanges at botany conferences. Plants, skeptics scoff, surely don't fall in love, bake soufflés, or ponder poetry. And can a simple reaction to one's environment truly qualify as active, intentional reasoning?

But the late Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist Barbara McClintock called plant cells "thoughtful." Darwin wrote about root-tip "brains." Not only can plants communicate with each other and with insects by coded gas exhalations, scientists say now, they can perform Euclidean geometry calculations through cellular computations and, like a peeved boss, remember the tiniest transgression for months.

To a growing number of biologists, the fact that plants are now known to challenge and exert power over other species is proof of a basic intellect.

"If intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, then, absolutely, plants are intelligent," agrees Leslie Sieburth, a biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

For philosophers, one of the key findings is that two cuttings, or clones, taken from the same "mother plant" behave differently even when planted in identical conditions.

"We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there," says Dr. Trewavas. "But why has no one come to grips with it? Because the prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that it's a simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot."

But here at the labs on the North Carolina State campus, where fluorescent grow-rooms hold genetic secrets and laser microscopes parse the inner workings of live plants, there is still skepticism about the ability of ordinary houseplants to intellectualize their environment.

Most plant biologists are still looking at the mysteries of "signal transduction," or how genetic, chemical, and hormonal orders are dispersed for complex plant behavior. But skeptics say it's less a product of intelligence than mechanical directives, more genetic than genius. Some see the attribution of intelligence to plants as relative - an oversimplification of a complex human trait.

And despite intensifying research, exactly how a plant's complex orders are formulated and carried out remains draped in leafy mystery.

"There is still much that we do not know about how plants work, but a big part of intelligence is self-consciousness, and plants do not have that," says Heike Winter Sederoff, a plant biologist at N.C. State.

Still, a new NASA grant awarded to the university to study gravitational effects on crop plants came in part due to new findings that plants have neurotransmitters very similar to humans' - capable, perhaps, of offering clues on how gravity affects more sentient beings. The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million research grant to pinpoint the molecular clockwork by which plants know when to grow and when to flower.

The new field of plant neurobiology holds its first conference - The First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in May in Florence, Italy.

The debate is rapidly moving past the theoretical. In space, "smart plants" can provide not only food, oxygen, and clean air, but also valuable companionship for lonely space travelers, say some - a boon for astronauts if America is to go to Mars. Research on the workings of the mustard weed's statolith, for example, may one day yield a corn crop with 1-3/8 the gravitational force of Earth.

Some Earth-bound farmers, meanwhile, see the possibility of communicating with plants to time waterings for ultimate growth. A new gene, Bypass-1, found by University of Utah researchers, may make that possible.

Still, it can be hard for the common houseplant to command respect - even among those who study it most closely.

"When I was a postdoc, I had a neighbor who watched me buy plants, forget to water them, and throw them out, buy them and throw them out," says Dr. Sieburth. "When she found out I had a PhD in botany, I thought she was going to die." (*)