Ensayos

Summary document of the FAO e-mail conference: "Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?"
Executive Summary
The availability of water is a challenge for all countries, but especially for those with scarce water resources and where the livelihoods of its people depend heavily on agriculture. The term 'biotechnology' includes a broad suite oftools that present varying degrees of technical sophistication and require different levels of capital input. A number of them can be used to mitigate water scarcity in agriculture, including a variety of plant biotechnologies, e.g. marker-assisted selection (MAS), and microbial biotechnologies, e.g. use of mycorrhizal fungi as a biofertiliser. Many examples of applications of biotechnology indeveloping countries were cited during this FAO e-mail conference. There was a general consensus that biotechnology has a valuable role to play in addressing the challenge of water scarcity in developing countries, although opinions differed on the relevance of different biotechnology tools. Despite much promising research and significant possibilities, the conference also indicated that manyapplications of biotechnology in this area have not yet met their full potential to deliver practical solutions to the end-user in developing countries.
Among the different plant biotechnologies, MAS and genetic modification elicited most discussion. Although the general opinion of participants was that MAS had significant potential, some underlined the obstacles to its practical application indeveloping countries, such as the relatively high costs of breeding using molecular markers and the complexity of traits involved in drought resistance and water use efficiency in plants. For genetic modification, promising research results were reported but many participants expressed doubts about the role of genetically modified crops in helping developing countries to cope with water scarcity,referring to the kinds of obstacles also relevant to MAS (costs, complexity of the traits to be improved etc.) as well as to a number of additional concerns, such as intellectual property rights issues and potential environmental impacts.
To ensure that research initiatives to develop drought resistant crops are successful and that the resulting products actually reach the farmers, participants calledfor increased collaboration between researchers in different disciplines and for all relevant stakeholders to be involved in the design of solutions to the problems of water scarcity in agriculture. Research should not neglect dryland (non-irrigated) agriculture. The role of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a strategic partnership supporting the work of 15international centres, in developing drought resistance crops was emphasised.
A positive outlook was foreseen for microbial biotechnologies in managing water scarcity. Participants described the potential of applying mycorrhizal fungi and certain bacteria as a biofertiliser to assist plants to cope with water stress, calling for greater research in this area. Several applications of biotechnologywere reported as playing a useful role in treating wastewater, mainly on a small scale, involving the use of plants and microbes, so that it could be re-used for agricultural purposes. Participants also discussed the potential to design biotechnology-based wastewater treatment systems in such a way that they yield co-products (e.g. biogas) that could be used to generate income locally.
1.Introduction
The theme of the 14th e-mail conference of the FAO Biotechnology Forum, which took place between 5 March and 1 April 2007, was "Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?". As for all other conferences of this Forum, a Background Document was prepared and posted before the conference began. The document presented an overview of some of the...