SCIENCE FILE: An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment. : Seed Money : California Genetics Firm Creates What May Be the South’s Latest Cash Crop

ELMODEL, Ga. —  Lucius Adkins stood in the muddy field and looked proudly at the rows and rows of ankle-high cotton and peanuts thriving on his land. He never envisioned the day he would plant seeds developed in a laboratory, much less a laboratory in California. He had no idea he would produce a crop containing an oil that had always come from plants grown in hot tropical zones of the world.

But that’s what happened earlier this year when Adkins and 17 other farmers in this area of southwest Georgia harvested the world’s first commercial genetically engineered oil-seed crop.

The seed is called laurate canola. For Southern farmers and farm suppliers, this new crop opens up intriguing economic opportunities.

Moreover, laurate canola is one of many genetically engineered crops that could change the face of farming. A tomato with longer shelf life and improved flavor is on the market. Herbicide-resistant and insect-resistant cotton is being being tested in 11 states. Virus-resistant squash has been introduced, along with insect-resistant potatoes and corn, and herbicide-resistant soybeans.

The laurate canola seed, planted in the fall, grows well through the winter. The crop can be rotated with peanuts and utilize fields that are often bare until spring. Grain elevators that currently stand empty for many months are perfect storage sites for laurate canola seed until time for processing. With little modification to their standard equipment, peanut processing plants can crush the seed into the valuable laurate-bearing oil.

“This whole economy down here is built on the [economically fragile] peanut program,” said Will Harris, a fourth-generation farmer who manages the Gold Kist complex in nearby Arlington. “Many of us feel that canola can be one of the things to help shore up this area economically.”

Laurate canola was developed in the laboratories of Calgene in Davis, Calif., as a source of lauric oil, a saturated fatty acid and key raw material used in the manufacture of soaps, laundry detergents, shampoos, non-dairy coffee whiteners, whipped toppings and other items. Historically, the primary sources of laurate--coconut oil and palm kernel oil from the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia--have been limited. Proponents say laurate would find broader use if a stable supply was available.

“The development of laurate canola represents something beyond the product itself,” said Eric Rey, vice president of oils for Calgene. “It represents a taste of what the future has to hold, with respect to making new types of oil.”

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In order to create canola with a laurate component, Calgene scientists searched their databases for a plant species with a high laurate composition. They hit upon the California Bay tree (Umbellularia Californica) with 58% laurate in the seed of its fruit. A gene that results in the accumulation of laurate was removed from the tree’s seed and introduced into the chromosome of common canola (Brassica Napus).

The oil-seed canola plant produces no natural laurate. However, the insertion of a single gene from the Bay tree yielded an oil containing 40% laurate. This is the first reported development of an oil-seed plant that produces a fatty acid not naturally present in the seed.

In its assessment of laurate canola last fall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture determined that laurate canola is not detrimental to the environment, will not damage processed agricultural commodities and is unlikely to harm organisms such as bees and earthworms that are beneficial to agriculture.

Jane Rissler, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, watchdog organization that monitors technological issues, said Calgene is doing more in the testing area than many other companies have done. But she expressed concern that producing laurate canola in the United States could hurt the economy of smaller countries that are currently exporting laurate from coconut oil.

Calgene’s response is that since the United States uses only about 14% of the world’s production of lauric oil, the company has no intention of trying to become the world supplier.

“We think there is much more upside with respect to stabilizing the market and encouraging greater overall use than there is downside for any particular current suppliers,” Rey said. “The impact on Malaysian and Philippine farmers is really negligible. . . . Our farmers need something, too.”

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For six of the last seven years, growers here had made a profit on canola. But what about a new kind of canola that had been genetically engineered and that no one had grown commercially before? Would farmers be interested in blazing a new agricultural trail?

Calgene’s Rey went to south Georgia last fall with a contract for more than 2,000 acres of laurate canola. A major U.S. detergent manufacturer, rumored to be Procter & Gamble, paid in advance for the nation’s first crop. Rey needed farmers to grow the new transgenic seed and he enlisted the aid of Will Harris and Gold Kist, which conducts slightly over $20 million in annual agricultural sales and procurements. Rey and Harris talked to farmers in four counties. “When we offered the Calgene contract that had the promise of being lucrative for them, then they seized the opportunity to go ahead and get in the business,” Harris said.

The growers received free seed and were paid $5.85 a bushel for the harvested laurate canola. Natural canola usually brings in $5 to $5.25 a bushel and seed costs $15 to $20 per acre. Farmers were asked to guarantee the “identity preservation” of the seed, to be sure that none of the pure genetically altered seed became contaminated with commodity canola.

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The growers planted the laurate canola knowing that there would be slightly less yield than with the normal commodity lines, but the extra money per bushel and the free seed would compensate for the difference.

Because the first crop of laurate canola was grabbed up so quickly, Calgene plans to return to Georgia for an expanded 1996 harvest. Rey says that for the next few years the South will be the “main basin” for his company’s laurate products. Area farmers are waiting to see what the next contract will offer.

Genetic modifications of laurate canola are continuing. Calgene has announced that future laurate canola may be modified to include a lysophosphartidic acid acyltransferase (LPAAT) gene cloned from coconut that will give greater control of oil molecule structure and fatty acid composition. According to Eric Rey, the LPAAT gene will act as a turbocharger to boost laurate content in laurate canola to more than 70%.

Lucius Adkins says it is the logical step in the evolution and production of agriculture. “As our resources diminish and our population increases, we’re going to have to utilize all the methods we can to produce food and fiber for the world.”