Gov't agriculturists at the
helm of GMO testing

By JOEL C. PAREDES

ON a Friday morning Dr. Aurora Legaspi was unusually busy attending to her small farm. It’s actually a mini- green house inside the  Bureau of Plant Industry’s National Seeds Quality Control Services (NSQCS) offices near Diliman in Quezon City.

As NSQCS’ chief, Dr. Legaspi, who describes herself as a seeds technologist, was overseeing the planting of their agency’s first experimental hybrid GMO rice seeds, which they acquired from Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice). Her enthusiastic agriculturist, Jane Bartolini, was busy attending to the tiny seeds. She was the experiment’s mother hen, although the agency also tapped a Philrice expert consultant for the seed testing.

After over 44 years in service, Dr. Legaspi could have just looked forward to a quiet retirement.

Yet soft-spoken Dr. Legaspi still looks eager to be part of a crucial project – that of institutionalizing biotechnology in seed testing.

By January, the NSQCS would have fully operationalized their high-tech biotechnology laboratory. Dr. Legaspi managed to give us a good tour of her modest office-cum-laboratory, which was granted late last year with the necessary equipments to venture in GMO seeds, starting with hybrid rice.

She is convinced that the trend in biotechnology is a key in pursuing modern methods in seed testing to ensure that government can maintain the quality of seeds to improve agricultural production in the country.

This will also give the government an opportunity to use advanced testing based on reliable and efficient molecular techniques for variety verification, pathogen identification in relation to seed health testing and seed quality control program, she says.

The NSQCS is actually the agency that is mandated to continuously provide services such as  seed certification, seed testing and training needed in assuring and maintaining  the quality of seeds used to improve agricultural production in the country.

Maribel Querijero, a senior agriculturist who is stationed at the biotech laboratory, says that as a member of the International Seed Testing Association, they have to cope with the challenges triggered by the globalization for the Philippines to regain competitiveness in the seed market.

As government’s regulatory body, the NSQCS is tasked to assure planters a steady supply of  high quality seeds and planting materials with distinctness, uniformity and stability.

“If seed growers or seed companies want to prove their seed is not contaminated by any GM we can test. But since some producers are promoting GMOs,  we can also prove that in testing their products,” says Querijero, who has been into seed testing since 1990 when she joined the BPI after a brief stint with the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos.

With her experience in biotech products, Querijero says she can assure that GMOs that are being tested here do no create allergens, contrary to critics claim. “I’ve seen it. The genes that they insert in feed do not really harm humans,” she says.

THE  year 2002 was actually the time when the Corn MON810, or popularly known as Bt corn, was finally approved by government for propagation as well as direct use for food or feed and processing.

It was widely acknowledged as a major breakthrough in the agriculture and science communities. It opened the country to the propagation of modern biotechnology. It also took the challenge needed to help ensure the success of government’s food security agenda.

The Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt corn, is resistant to corn borer, an insect that destroys corn crops. Bt corn is produced by transferring bacterial genes to the corn to make it resistant to corn borer.

The product was already commercially available in the United States, Canada, Japan, European Union, South Africa and Argentina but the BT corn still had to pass through the Department of Agriculture’s stringent—and rigid — evaluation process. The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) tapped 16 personnel for feed safety, the Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Product Standards  (BFARS) and two technical experts from the Fertilizer and Pesticides Authority (FPA ) the safety in handling of BT corn in food and feed.

Finally, experts concluded that Bt corn was safe to humans, animals, non-target organisms. It was also as nutritious as any ordinary corn, safer than chemical insecticides and very effective in controlling Asiatic corn borer.

Despite its discovered wonders, it’s not surprising that cynics would simply find   BT corn a killer. It has a smack of multinational control, tracing its roots to the US multinational giant Monsanto, which was a target of a worldwide campaign by anti-biotech activists.

Says environmentalist-turned anti-biotech activist Roberto Verzola:”This is so important to me that I didn’t feel like eating for 30 days, when government decided to commercialize a GMO called Bt Corn.”

He even alleged that so-called “genetic contamination” is becoming a worldwide problem. “Certainly (this) requires a second hard look,” he says.

Today, however, Dr. Merle Palacpac, co-chair of the BPI Biotechnology Core Team, feels vindicated. She was part of the team that evaluated the biotech products. “At least we have proven that Bt corn, no matter how controversial, is safe after all” she says.

Dr. Palacpac,  chief of the post entry quarantine station in Los Banos, Laguna,  says there are 18 other GMOs that government is now evaluating for possible commercial use, among them soybeans, canola, cotton  and potato.

With the influx of GMOs, the government has begun modernizing the plant quarantine services laboratories for GM and plant pathogen detection.

Dr. Palacpac says their target is to establish an internationally accredited testing facility for rapid detection of GMOs as well pests in plants, planting materials and plant products.

Palacpac says they hope to increase the export with the expedition of sector certification and application of modern phytosanitary measures acceptable to other country.

While modernizing plant quarantine services, the laboratory can help build people’s confidence of the general public on the capacity of government to safeguard the public from plant pests and unwanted organisms on plants, plant products and regulated articles.

Indeed, while the country is open to GMOs, the BPI maintains the need to detect “unapproved” GM transformation events in imported GMOs using validated protocols. While these products are already commercially available in other countries, they will have to pass through stringent evaluation by government experts.

As then Agriculture Secretary Leonardo Montemayor puts it when he issued administration order No. 8, in April 2002:  “The products of modern biotechnology cannot be enjoyed fully by the people unless uncertainties regarding their risks to human health and the environment are minimized and managed, if not eliminated”.

Montemayor issued the order nearly a year after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued a policy statement on modern  biotechnology, declaring that the promotion  of safe and responsible use of modern biotechnology and its products as “one of the several means to achieve  and sustain food security, equitable access to health services, sustainable and safe environment and industry development.”

AT the National Seed Quality Control Service, the opening of a new biotechnology laboratory gives government an opportunity to use advanced testing procedures based on reliable and efficient molecular techniques.

Varietal purity is an important seed quality control parameter affecting the performance of a variety and quality of its produce. Genetic purity on the other hand, is also an important requirement to obtain and maintain plant variety protection.

Traditionally, the method used by government for varietal testing was mainly based only on ocular inspection of a representative seed sample. In some cases, varietal purity certification was done by conducting a grow-out test.

These methods lack precision due to subjectiveness, long duration required to produce grow-out results, costs and environmental effects that complicate the assessment of genetic traits.

Recent advances in molecular techniques, however, opened new opportunities for seed quality assurance and plant variety protection.

Newer methods based on DNA variations have gained increasing acceptance in variety verification and seed testing because of the robustness of the method and opportunity for automation.

DNA-based techniques also offer simple, fast and accurate for discriminating seemingly identical varieties or seeds such as hybrid seed parentals that are otherwise difficult to be distinguished through conventional methods.

These methods used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a powerful  technique developed not only for plant variety verification and seed purity testing but also for the precise detection of generically modified seeds.

The Bureau of Plant Industry has  started training laboratory staff on various aspects of DNA analysis and operation of various equipment which Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap allocated late last year  for the biotechnology project.

With their new laboratory, NSQC’s Dr. Legaspi says they can  evaluate and validate modern-biotechnology based procedures for plant variety verification, seed purity testing especially for hybrid seeds and detection of GMO in conventional seed lots.