COM 0883.041 2006-2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

OU7 JAN-23-2008 12:39 HARC 80849660,0 are not willing, those seek protection. A point to be made here is that the Chair of The Department of Agriculture has already stated that no field testing of coffee shoul f be allowed without first a study on the pollen movement of coffee. That research has nit he done nor is it even been proposed by anyone. So what is the issue? There is none! The questions for this Council are: Has the risk been demonstrated sufficiently to you for you to be proposing supprat to pass a LAW to protect a market? Is there a product in the pipeline that has a trait that someone is interm:(d ii enough to pay the costs of technology transfer? If so, how many more years are needed for it to be deregulated? Is there any verifiable evidence that the Kona market is being threatened )y customers unwilling to buy their product because of the fear of possible presence of a few genetically engineered beans? Now as I mentioned earlier, I would like to provide you with a better understanding for th', tinI.- frame for any new plant development. No matter what method is used to develop a new plant it goes through a field selection process. In all cases several plants are derived which must go through the field/observation and selection process. Yield has historically been a driving characteristic but pest resi3lala (weed/insect/disease) as well as nutrient and plant structure are also important depending on t to crop. That process takes years and depends on each crop cycle time from plant to harvest. i ant most familiar with sugarcane since our organization has been :involved with that the longe>t and it takes us over 10 years to come up with a new plant that has some improved property over t e existing commercial one. In the end, we are not sure what genetic changes were made to t Io plant-Just that it performs better and provides better test results than the existing one. -e! r,c assure you, that process takes millions of dollars paid by the local sugarcane industry and dus.i t happen without considerable reflection. There are no regulations for any of this, just careful a..d thoughtful practices developed over time. With genetically engineered plants, add to the front end of that process in determining ho ,v :c, grow a plant in a tissue culture system from plant cells which may differ from plant to ptar t Other steps are to determine what part of a plant is receptive to gene insertion, to acquire a usef i gene and get it into a usable form, to insert the gene, to grow and select cells that acquired the inserted gene, to use the tissue culture system to develop leaves, stalk and roots, to test th< selected plants for the presence and functionality of the gene, to successfully transfer selects- plants to potting material, to test the material to determine effectiveness and stability of tl.e inserted gene, and finally, to safely determine effectiveness and stability under field conditions ns outlined in the preceding paragraph. Using this technology one knows what material is pro',i:.tir c the desired benefit and can locate it in the genetic matrix. The benefits provided are a resit c,:ice in the number of plants taken through the field selection process, which is very costly, u_d a quicker method of getting the trait of interest into a plant without losing other beneficial traa-s, a common problem. Hawaii Agriculture Research Center January 24, 2008 fate 2