Controversy over transgenic cassava project: US accused of pushing GM cassava for biofuels from Africa

In a saga that has been raging for a while now, controversy has deepened over a multi-million dollar USAid-supported cassava research programme, which proponents had said would help boost millions of East Africans' food security, but which critics have dismissed as an attempt by the United States to develop alternative sources of starch overseas, from which to make ethanol. Once the GM crop would have been introduced, African farmers would have become dependent on the American companies that commercialise the variety (the story of Roundup Ready Soya is well known). But now it is revealed that the prestigious USAid biotech project has failed.

In the latest twist, the project's leading American biotech research facility, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre, (which just received a US$15 million grant from Monsanto) has admitted that varieties of genetically-modified cassava that it had claimed to be disease-resistant are actually vulnerable to the devastating cassava mosaic disease (CMD), the leading cause of farm losses for the crop and the main focus of the project.

CMD routinely leads to losses of over 30 per cent of the cassava harvest in some farms. A statement by the centre dated May 26, 2006, says that though resistance to CMD had been established through genetic engineering seven years ago, "the resistance was subsequently lost, and [changes to] the plant's DNA had taken place." [See Cassava Viral Resistance Review Update and Danforth Centre Cassava Update].

The dramatic revelations of the resistance failure come just in time, as plans were at an advanced stage to have the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) actually test the transgenic cassava plants under natural field conditions as a preamble to its release to farmers. The genetically modified cassava varieties were developed through the Disease-Resistant Cassava for Kenya Project [*.pdf], which is funded by USAid, whose stated goal was "to develop and deliver transgenic, disease-resistant cassava planting materials to farmers in Kenya to increase their harvests and improve their food security."

The entire project is now under scrutiny, because the Danforth Center's dangerous links with big agribusiness (Monsanto) and with the US government's bioenergy research program (see below), are creating more and more suspicion about the 'aid' project.

Critics of the cassava-research programme now say that the objectives of the project go beyond food security, and touch on the search by the United States of a cheap source of starch other than maize to manufacture ethanol to help wean it from oil. The development of a GM cassava would also help break down resistance to the introduction of genetically-modified crops across the region. [See GM Watch's critique].

According to the critics, a senior scientist at Danforth Centre, Dr Claude Fauquet, admitted as such when he said in a briefing paper that the "acquisition of the cassava genome sequence will provide a platform to explore the vast biodiversity within cassava wild species. Ultimately, these activities will position cassava as a valuable source of renewable bio-energy."

As we reported earlier, together with several other US research facilities, the Danforth Centre, has in addition to being involved in the effort to develop disease-resistant varieties of cassava been contracted by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI) to sequence the plant's entire genome as part of a vast bioenergy research effort:
ethanol :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: sustainability :: USAid :: Danforth :: Monsanto :: cassava :: transgenic ::

The DOE-JGI itself acknowledges that cassava is an excellent energy source which "is grown worldwide as a source of food for approximately one billion people, raising the possibility that it could be used globally to alleviate dependence on fossil fuels."

According to the South African-based African Centre for Biosafety, these admissions mark a "dramatic about-turn from previous commitments to address hunger and the nutritional needs of people in developing countries."

Proponents of the research programme, however, contend that its critics are opposed to it purely because of the fact that it involves genetic-modification, a controversial issue in most African countries outside South Africa.

Before the latest announcements of setbacks, the Danforth Centre had released an elaborate programme in which the disease resistant varieties would be rolled out across East Africa, starting with the distribution of the region's most popular cassava variety – Ebwanatareka – for adoption by 32,000 Kenyan farming families.

"Successful achievement of the project goal will help 200,000 Kenyan cassava farmers and their family members increase their food security by controlling CMD and increasing their cassava harvests by 50 per cent on a sustainable basis," the Danforth Centre says in its website. "A 50 per cent increase in yield for these families will generate an additional 63,000 tonnes of food each year."

The Ebwanatareka variety would then be distributed to Uganda, where it was projected to substantially raise the country's cassava out-put.

"By deploying the same transgenic variety in Uganda, annual production of cassava in that country will increase by over 600,000 tonnes, and the total number of beneficiaries in both countries will increase to over one million persons," says the Danforth Centre's statement.


More information:

- GMWatch, Mariam Mayet: GM cassava fails in Africa - 4 sept. 2006
- The East African: Doubts over cassava project - 10 sept. 2006
- New Scientist: Monsanto's showcase project in Africa fails, Vol 181 No. 2433, 7 February 2004

- African Centre for Biosafety
- FAO website on Cassava Mosaic Disease

Presentation of the original project
- USAid: USAID Africa: Agricultural Initiative to Cut hunger in Africa[*.pdf] - 19 Feb 04
- Danforth Center: Danforth Center Spearheads Effort to Sequence Cassava at National Research Center

- The Danforth Center has issued two updates in which it explains where the project went wrong:
Cassava Viral Resistance Review Update
Danforth Centre Cassava Update

Photo courtesy: USAid.