(Jon Han) 

Taking Transgenics to the Top

It’s been more than a decade since Brazilian scientists made history by presenting the first full genetic sequence of a plant pathogen—Xylella fastidiosa—in a paper featured on the cover of Nature. Even so, the momentum that sprang from this exciting development is still going strong in the country’s research community. In 2008, Brazilian scientists published over 30,000 peer-reviewed research papers, more than twice as many as in 2003, and Brazil graduates some 7,000 Ph.D. students every year.

Plant biotechnology is the nation’s forte. “Brazil is the engine of biotech crop growth in Latin America and, after the U.S., the second biggest producer of genetically modified crops in the world,” says Peter Graeve, a spokesperson for the German chemical company BASF, which collaborated with Embrapa, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, to develop a genetically modified (GM) soybean. Furthermore, the amount of Brazilian land planted with transgenic crops is expected to increase by 20 percent in the 2010–2011 crop year. Brazil’s GM harvest is increasing the country’s agricultural yield so much that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that Brazil will be the world’s biggest food producer within the next decade. The nation is also applying its agricultural expertise to generate renewable energy, having produced 244 million tons of oil equivalent in 2009, of which 18.2 percent came from sugarcane and 13.9 percent from other biomass. All told, 43.7 percent of Brazil’s energy comes from renewable sources—more than three times the world average.

Brazil hasn’t always been a biotech success story. Although the government approved the country’s first GM soybean in 1998, a judge later banned its use. Then in 2003, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva passed a law legalizing the seed again, and by 2006, the government had established a science-based regulatory system for GM crops. Since that time, 21 transgenic crops have been approved for use in Brazil: 11 for corn, six for cotton and four for soybeans, all of which are designed to be resistant to herbicides or insects and thus increase yield. And while da Silva is no longer in office—he was succeeded in January 2011 by his former chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff—few expect new leadership to alter the regulatory system, which is now considered efficient and stable.

Growing Approval

Indeed, Brazil has become openly accepting of transgenic technology, which can explain much of its biotech success. “Brazil’s politics and the regulatory agencies involved in examining biotechnology are not driven primarily by the precautionary principle,” explains H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow with the nonprofit Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. “Brazil recognizes that it is not the way plants are created, but the benefits and risks arising from the resulting product that should be the source of potential regulation.” The Brazilian government, Burnett says, does not prevent the development or sale of GM products unless credible safety threats are identified.

In addition to the research community, Brazilian farmers have embraced GM crops from the beginning, notes Gloverson Moro, R&D director of Latin America at the Swiss seed company Syngenta. “There is a big hunger from the farmers for the newest and best technology available, to improve their yield and their incomes,” he says. Current government limits allow up to 1 percent of food and food ingredients for consumption by humans and animals to contain or be produced with the aid of biotechnology.

Many cite the government’s investment in graduate education and research as another key reason for the current biotech boom. In the 1980s, Brazil began financing scholarships that sent thousands of Brazilian students to study science abroad. “Many of those scientists came back and slowly were taken in by the universities and research institutions, bringing back to Brazil their knowledge and experience, which became extremely important when the economy started to improve several years later,” explains Eugênio Ulian, scientific affairs manager of Monsanto Brazil. “These scientists, in a better economy, were able to improve the peer-reviewed processes within the government funding agencies and create successful research programs that convinced the government that money spent in science is money well spent.”

Persisting Problems

Brazil’s science community still has its share of hurdles to overcome. Although research is thriving, a Brazilian scientist has never won a Nobel Prize, and only 103 U.S. patents were awarded to Brazilian scientists in 2009. The latter is largely a cultural issue, according to Moro. “There is this mindset that public science should be in the public domain,” he explains. “Intellectual property is still relatively new in Brazil.”

Perhaps the biggest problem is that relatively few public-private partnerships exist in Brazil compared to the number in countries like the U.S. “We have a lot of good science and good research being done by public institutions, and there is a lot of good science and R&D being done by the private companies here, but I believe that a closer collaboration between the two areas will be very important in the future,” Moro explains. Right now, “it’s not a natural thing.” The government is, however, doing its part to foster more collaboration. In 2005, it established the Innovation Law, which provides incentives to the public and private sectors to share staff, funding and facilities.

So what should other developing countries do to emulate Brazil’s success? Ulian says that, first and foremost, they must invest heavily in science education. “It is not enough to have big sums of money available to finance research projects if you do not have people with the proper education to write good projects, and to judge these projects, and select the really good ones to be financed,” he says. “My perception is that investment in graduate education, with a significant part of it being pursued in top institutions abroad, is the most important and initial step.”