Beijing's potato research, hope and concern

• Source: Global Times
• [02:03 February 09 2010]
• Comments

By Andrew Tait

The Agricultural Ministry of China and the International Potato Center (CIP) last week signed an agreement to launch the new CIP-China Center for Asia and the Pacific (CCCAP) in Beijing.

The center, located at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, hopes to attract international and local scientists and researchers to its projects, aimed at developing potatoes as a solution to issues such as food shortages and poverty, according to the CIP's international website.

The center has yet to start its own research projects but plans initially to carry on the work conducted at sister centers in Indonesia, Nepal, North Korea and Vietnam, amongst others, according to Doctor Xie Kaiyun, liaison scientist for the CCCAP. Since 1971, CIP International has been working across the world on a variety of potato related programs. Its website also tells visitors that "hundreds of millions of people in the developing world depend on potatoes for their survival, and the potatoes could play a major role in feeding the future population."

But not everyone is embracing the new center's aims. While the majority of the research will focus on developing new varieties of potato through natural processes, some amount of development will still be devoted to genetic modification research.

Ella Wang, Director for the Greenpeace Food and Agriculture Program, told the Global Times that while Greenpeace has no direct objection to the technology associated with CIP's research, "given the imprecise techniques at the moment and the unpredictable nature of GE, it is Greenpeace's position to oppose the commercialization of GE crop."

When contacted by the Global Times, professor Jiang Gaoming of the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences expressed his objection to the project, saying that he felt the proposed research would be bad for the environment and bad for people's health. "Every life has the desire to survive. So in the future, germs and bacteria will get stronger and stronger, and be even more difficult to control," professor Jiang told the Global Times when asked how CIP's work may influence the environment. "The statistics that fuel this kind of research are wrong. We need to develop ecological farming to release the potential of the land and help farmers get better money and better opportunities."

The launch comes at a time when the EU is facing criticism for its openness towards GM foods, and the Chinese government is moving to increase industrial use of genetically modified products in a bid to promote the development of the seed industry.