marker-assisted selection in wheat - ictsd

430Marker-assisted selection – Current status and future perspectives in crops, livestock, forestry and fishparticipants. These included some generaltopics regarding MAS (such as its costs, itsactual impact to date on products deliveredto farmers, whether it should be a priorityin developing countries and whetherit was necessary to have an establishedbreeding programme in place before introducingMAS), as well as some MAS-relatedissues that were more technical, such aswhich traits are suitable for MAS andthe importance of tight marker-gene linkages.Other kinds of issues raised includedintellectual property rights, public–privatesector linkages, the differences in capacitybetween developing countries with respectto MAS and the role of the CGIAR andinternational organizations. Throughoutthe chapter, specific references to messagesposted are provided, giving the participant’ssurname and message number. All the individualmessages are available at www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c10logs.htm.During the conference, contributionswere not evenly spread across the fouragricultural sectors of the conference.MAS for crop and livestock geneticimprovement dominated the discussions,with issues relating to forest trees andaquaculture mentioned much less, possiblyindicating differences in uptake of thisrelatively new technology among thefour sectors. Nonetheless, many of theissues and concerns raised were generalin nature and applicable across sectors.These issues included considerations ofcosts and gains, intellectual property rightsand the benefits of partnerships to allowdeveloping countries greater opportunitiesfor developing and using MAS.Murphy (1) began the conference with arequest that MAS be viewed dispassionatelyas a potential tool for crop improvement to bedeployed alongside conventional methods.Sokefun (64) referred to conventionalselection methods as “soft” technologiesand the newer technologies, such as MAS,as “hard” technologies, and suggestedthat the hard would not replace the softtechnologies and that a fusion of both wouldachieve the best results. In contrast to moreupstream technologies (including geneticmodification, mutagenesis and protoplastfusion), which generate additional variationin plant populations, Murphy (1) describedMAS as a “downstream technology” that,like conventional phenotypic selection, canbe used to select the optimal variants in apopulation.The conference discussion was balancedand the topic of the potential of MAS didnot evoke a strong reaction among theparticipants, although many had reservationsabout it. There was consequently littleindication of a substantial dichotomy ofopinion whereby participants could be putinto pro- and anti-MAS camps. This is insharp contrast to many debates that havebeen held about genetic modification. Asstated by Muralidharan (7), MAS differsfrom genetic modification in being morewidely acceptable.There was considerable agreementamong the participants on the perceivedopportunities and constraints associatedwith MAS and the usefulness and applicabilityof the technology in developingcountries. Olori (21) thought that successfulapplication of MAS in a well structuredbreeding programme in any developingcountry would yield the same benefitsas in developed countries. However, assuggested by Montaldo (18) for geneticimprovement in animals, it would benecessary to make case-by-case studies,taking into account not only biologicalissues, but also social, political and economicones, before making recommendations onapplication of MAS.