SCRI Annual Report 2003/2004 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
Direct and indirect energy consumption in agriculture
for 2001, but not including the manufacture and distribution
of food, was reckoned on ‘as supplied to agriculture’
basis to be 183.1 PetaJoules (PJ) compared
with 240.3 PJ in 1985. The 2001 figure represented
only 0.3% of overall UK energy consumption. Energy
was used directly for heating and motive power, and
this amounted to 48.9 PetaJoules, with the bulk
accounted for by petroleum and electricity (24.4PJ and
16.5PJ, respectively). Indirect energy inputs were estimated
at 134.2 PJ in 2001, representing fertiliser manufacture
(94.6 PJ), animal feeds (20.7 PJ), tractor
purchases (10.3 PJ), and pesticide manufacture (8.6
PJ). The long-term trend of indirect energy usage
since 1985 has been one of decline, with a questionable
presumption by Government that adoption of
organic production methods will further depress energy
consumption. 2002-2003.
Medicinal Plants The world has embarked on the
‘knowledge economy’, a new educational and social
phenomenon, raising the question as to the part to be
played by countries that are not in the select group of
‘leading’ economies. There is a danger that many
countries will become increasingly sidelined from the
benefits to be obtained from exploiting modern science,
engineering, and a raft of new technologies.
Consolidations, mergers, and strategic alliances are
altering national and transnational trading arrangements.
Huge flows of capital take place across borders,
flows that dwarf the roles of bodies such as the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund. The growing
influence of such bodies as the World Trade
Organisation demonstrate the inexorable rise of globalisation
and international competition. The Internet is
revolutionising the flow of information, scholarship,
and the methods of trading. Importantly, intellectual
property (IP) is tradable. There are huge opportunities
arising from new areas of science, principally in information
technology, computing, physics, chemistry,
and biotechnology. Advances in molecular genetics
have given rise to a plethora of new industries based on
structural and functional genomics, proteomics,
metabolomics, bioinformatics, diagnostics etc. which
are collectively referred to as the ‘modern bioindustries’.
A noteworthy development has been the formation
of ‘industry clusters’ which comprise co-located
universities, institutes, spin-out companies, serviceproviders,
stockists, marketing and design companies,
and related manufacturing companies.
Drugs from plants represents an expanding area of
human endeavour with widespread ramifications into
public health policy, new approaches for pharmaceutical
industries, the application of state-of-the-art technologies
and manufacturing systems, novel intellectual
property, access to traditional knowledge, exploitation
of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity, and policy issues
on benefit-sharing.
In Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
(Merriam-Webster Inc. 1980), ‘drug’ is defined as (a) a
substance used as a medicine, or for making medicines
for internal or external use; (b) a substance recognised
in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary; and (c) a
substance used for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation,
treatment, or prevention of disease. Drugs, therefore,
include diagnostics and prophylactics. Biotechnology
refers to the use of organisms, parts of organisms, or
living processes for the needs of humans, an activity
that is the most R&D-intensive industry in most of
the advanced economies.
Medicinal plants have and continue to be used directly
or processed to (a) soothe and cure infections, diseases,
and pain; (b) sedate, arouse, and hallucinate; (c) act as
birth-control agents, purgatives and blood-pressure
regulators; (d) control excretions and secretions. There
is debate as to the extent to which modern medicine is
based on drugs from plants consequent on the impact
of synthetic chemistry. In the United States
Pharmacopoeia, 70% of the listed drugs were plantderived
whereas by 1936, 40% were plant-derived, a
figure that has remained more or less constant,
although several of the remaining 60% are conceptually
based on plant-derived remedies. In addition, there
is a rapidly growing over-the-counter market in nutritional
supplements, most of which relate to traditional
herbal medicines, and regulatory authorities worldwide
are attempting to bring in quality-assurance measures,
and seek validation of health-enhancing claims.
In this ‘post-genomic era’, there is renewed interest in
medicinal plants, as the pharmaceutical multinationals
seek new approaches to generate new products, and
governments become concerned over the massive
growth in healthcare costs. As it is, around 80% of the
global population is dependent on herbal medicine,
based on traditional knowledge gleaned through generations
of trial-and-error observations, word-of-mouth
descriptions, and various types of record-keeping.
Written records extend back to the Sumerian,
Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian (e.g. the Ebers papyrus
that details 850 plant medicines), Indian (e.g. Rig Veda
that details 1500 plant medicines) and Chinese (e.g.
Shen No(u)ng, the Yellow Emperor, Taoists) civilisa-
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