Field trials of pharm and industrial plants have been allowed in Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico.

Below is a list of some of the companies and universities currently involved in the development of pharm and industrial crops, with websites addresses, if available.

Companies
Ventria Bioscience ( www.apinc.com )
Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research ( http://www.bti.cornell.edu )
CropTech ( www.croptech.com )
DuPont ( www.dupont.com )
EPIcyte ( www.epicyte.com )
Integrated Protein Technologies, a subsidiary of Monsanto ( www.iptbio.com )
Large Scale Biology Corporation ( www.lsbc.com )
Medicago ( www.medicago.com )
Meristem Therapeutics ( www.meristem-therapeutics.com )
Planet Biotechnology
ProdiGene ( www.prodigene.com )
SemBioSys ( www.sembiosys.ca )
Stauffer Seeds ( www.staufferseeds.com )
Ventria Bioscience ( www.ventriabio.com )
Universities
Iowa State University
University of Hawaii
University of Wisconsin
Washington State University

Scientists and companies are developing and testing a large number of crops producing pharmaceuticals, biologics, and industrial and research chemicals. (Biologics are diagnostic or therapeutic products derived from living sources and are typically complex mixtures not easily identified or characterized.) A few of the products are discussed below. Names of many more crop-produced chemicals which are under development are not available to the public because under federal laws companies may withhold this information as confidential business data. Except where noted, the products described have not been commercialized.

• Pharmaceuticals or drugs
  Pharmaceuticals (or drugs), which are, generally speaking, chemicals intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent diseases, are being produced in a number of pharm plants. Among them are alpha-galactosidase and glucocerebrosidase, enzymes to treat Fabry’s and Gaucher’s diseases, respectively.

  Other proteins called “defensins” are being manufactured in plants with hopes that their antimicrobial characteristics will make them useful replacements for antibiotics. Drugs are also being produced as anticoagulants, blood substitutes, and hormones, and for wound repair and the treatment of anemia, liver cirrhosis, cystic fibrosis, HIV, and hepatitis B and C.

• Biologics
  Biologics are complex biological products such as antibodies, vaccines, and blood products used in human and veterinary medicine. In the biologics category, pharm plants are producing antibodies against the bacterium that causes tooth decay and for treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Vaccines against hepatitis B, rabies, HIV, malaria, autoimmune diabetes, and cholera are being produced in tobacco, corn, or potato plants. These vaccines will be purified from the plants before being given to humans, most likely by injection or as a pill. Crop-derived vaccines meant to be presented as food (edible vaccines) have been produced against diseases including, among others, measles, polio, diphtheria, yellow fever, and various types of viral diarrhea. These vaccines are being made in tomato fruit and other plant parts that can be eaten raw. (Cooking typically destroys the efficacy of vaccines.) Plant-produced edible vaccines are also being manufactured for veterinary purposes. Scientists recently conducted clinical trials in which pigs were fed a vaccine produced in corn against transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), one of the most important diseases in swine. And a vaccine meant to promote resistance to mink enteritis virus, canine parvovirus, and feline panleukopenia virus has been made in blackeyed beans.

  Industrial chemicals
  Industrial chemicals are compounds used in the manufacture of products like paper, plastics, personal care items, and laundry detergents. Many industrial chemicals are enzymatic proteins that promote the chemical reactions necessary for a particular manufacturing process. Trypsin, an enzyme traditionally isolated from bovine sources and used in large volumes in the detergent and leather industries, for example, and laccase, another enzyme used in making detergents but also in the manufacturing of fiberboard, are being produced in transgenic corn.

  Other useful industrial chemicals are the products of chemical reactions driven by enzymes, rather than enzymes themselves. Introducing particular enzymes into industrial crops can result in production of these types of industrial chemicals. For example, the first commercialized industrial crop incorporated a gene from the California bay tree to change the fatty acid biosynthesis pathways in canola. The added gene dramatically altered canola oil composition such that nearly 40% of the oil was comprised of lauric acid, a key raw material in the manufacture of soap, detergents, and cosmetic products. Conventional canola does not contain lauric acid.

• Research chemicals
  Chemical compounds used in research and diagnostic laboratories are referred to as research chemicals. The protein avidin, utilized for purifying other proteins, was the first research chemical commercialized from an industrial crop-in 1997. Beta-glucuronidase, another enzyme used extensively for plant molecular biology research was also commercialized in 1997.

  Multi-purpose chemicals
  The same plant-produced chemical may be used for different purposes. For example, the enzyme trypsin, discussed above as an industrial chemical, also has medical and research uses. Thus, corn plants engineered to synthesize trypsin are producing pharmaceuticals as well as industrial and research chemicals.

Pharm and industrial crops are plants genetically engineered to produce medical and industrial products, including human and veterinary drugs and biologics and industrial and research chemicals. Crops intentionally treated with genetically engineered viruses that, in turn, produce an industrial or medical substance in the infected plants are also considered industrial or pharm crops. In general, the term “pharm crops” refers to plants producing drugs or biologics and “industrial crops” to those producing industrial or research chemicals.

Pharm and industrial crops are produced by the same methods used to genetically engineer food crops. Briefly, scientists use recombinant DNA techniques to locate and isolate genes of pharmaceutical or industrial interest. These “transgenes” are then inserted into a crop plant using one of several methods now standard in the industry. The resulting pharm or industrial plant then produces the protein product encoded by the transgene as if it were one of its own naturally occurring genes. Farmers can grow pharm and industrial crops in same way they do unaltered crops.

For most pharm and industrial uses, scientists plan to extract the novel proteins (or the compounds produced as a result of the function of the novel proteins) from the industrial or pharm crop and purify them before use. In such cases, the new proteins in the crops may or may not be harmful. In some cases, the novel products will be delivered in active form to people or animals in the edible fruit or other parts of the plant.

Genetically engineered crops allowed in the US food supply

Coral reefs are one of the wonders of nature, because of their enchanting beauty and unusual biology. In addition, many consider them to be second only to tropical rain forests as incubators and protectors of biodiversity.

The reefs, which grow in shallow, warm waters, consist largely of the skeletons of small, sedentary animals called polyps, which are relatives of jellyfish and sea anemones. The remains of dead polyps - in the form of calcium carbonate - constitute the main body of the reef. Living polyps form a kind of skin over the surface of the coral reef.

Warming oceans, pollution from human activities, damage from careless tourists and fishermen — even increased ultraviolet radiation from the sun due to the depletion of ozone in the upper atmosphere — have been blamed for extensive illness and death in the coral population. Corals are uniquely vulnerable because they are near coastlines and near the surface of the ocean.

Mankind is just beginning to perceive the value of coral reefs, with their known supplies of food and as-yet-unexplored biota that could lead to the development of new medicines. The U.S. State Department estimates “half the potential pharmaceuticals being explored are from the oceans, many from coral reef ecosystems.”

In Reef Research, Dr. Patrick Colin, a marine “bioprospector,” clearly described the hopes that had led him to spend the 1990s collecting marine samples in the Pacific for the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI). “Over the past 20 some years the NCI has been screening terrestrial plants and marine organisms worldwide for bioactivity against cancer and AIDS, and has come up with a number of hot prospects, a number of which are in clinical trials?. We try to collect from all environments possible, from shoreline areas with mangroves, beaches or rocks to deep offshore reef environments?. We do not collect any hard (stony) corals, threatened, endangered or locally protected species. We are mostly interested in soft-bodied sessile invertebrates which rely on their chemistry, rather than stinging cells, spines, jaws or teeth for their survival.”

Clearly, conservation of coral, and oceans in general, is linked to human survival and will continue to be an urgent issue in the 21st century.

Forests are prime reservoirs of biodiversity, as well as the ancient cradle of the human race. Anthropologists believe that species ancestral toours lived amid the trees, later emerging to grassland savannas to explore and hunt.

Still cradles of life, forests also perform all kinds of practical services that benefit modern humans. They produce oxygen we breathe and suck up air pollution. In the United States, 80 percent of fresh water originates in forested areas. Forests purify water and refill underground aquifers; in addition, they absorb rain, and slow down floods and water runoff.

Forests and woodlands over the world have changed over the millennia due to changes in climate and geology. In the modern world, forests are classified into various groups, including temperate-zone and tropical forests. Not all rain forests are in the tropics — some are in cooler climates. And there are other kinds, such as riparian forests, that separate interior areas from coastlines.

Each part of the forest supports life. The soil is full of uncounted numbers of microbes, insects, and fungi, essential to recycling organic matter, and thus to the survival of all life on earth. Larger animals live on the forest floor, and the shrub and tree canopy layers are vital to birds. There are about 1.5 million known species in the world, and the true number of species may be ten times more than that. Many of these spend their lives growing, burrowing, wriggling, or plodding along in forests — or flying through trees. The extent of forested lands has made it possible for birds and animals to range freely in search of food and appropriate climate; the resulting horizontal and vertical complexity of the forest and its density of life creates biodiversity.

Tropical forests generate the richest biodiversity, as the energy generated by the equatorial sun encourages life to proliferate amid abundant nutrients. Unfortunately, these forests are quite fragile, and over the past half-century have succumbed in large numbers to human clearing and logging. Global forests themselves, as well as their diverse reserves of plants and animals, are threatened as never before. It has been estimated that by the late 1980s three quarters of old-growth forests on the planet had been destroyed, including about half of tropical and temperate rain forests; and human population expansion continues to lead to the clearing of new lands.

According to the U.S. State Department, “one of every six known bird species, one of every 11 mammals, and one of every 15 reptiles” makes the Amazon rainforest its home. Unfortunately, as David B. Sandalow, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, recently noted: “Tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. Saws and bulldozers are leveling roughly 200 hectares per minute. A soccer field is close to two hectares, so we are losing about 120 soccer fields of tropical forest per minute, more than 7,000 soccer fields per hour, more than 170,000 soccer fields per day.”

Around the globe, forests that are not totally destroyed are being fragmented by roads and human development, a change that threatens the health and survival of the indigenous plants and animals. Biologists believe that destroying 90 percent of a wooded habitat reduces local species by about half. Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson has noted that “the poorest people with the fastest-growing populations live next to the richest deposits of biological diversity” and that a single “farmer clearing rain forest to feed his family?will cut more kinds of trees than are native to all of Europe.”

Effective forest conservation requires a commitment to look beyond the short term and to retain large forest areas for the bounty they can provide future generations. The greater the biodiversity of an environment, the greater its ability to withstand environmental stress and produce new and useful forms of life. Properly managed, forest animals and plants may produce more valuable medicine, food, and construction material over the years and decades than can be procured by clear-cutting forests and destroying them in their current form. One frequently cited example of the rewards of maintaining biodiversity for future generations is the recent discovery of the Madagascar rosy periwinkle, which was found to produce chemicals that can cure Hodgkin’s disease and childhood leukemia. About 3 percent of the world’s flowering plants, so far, have been examined for anticancer chemicals similar to those of the periwinkle. In the United States, 25 percent of pharmaceutical prescriptions are derived from plant extracts and another 13 percent are from microorganisms. The venerable neem tree of South Asia has been thought for centuries to have all kinds of health-giving effects; yet, scientists are just beginning to study it systematically. Little-known plants and animals can be potent sources of pharmaceuticals because they have evolved a range of chemical strategies over the millennia to defend themselves from predators, survive, and thrive.

Forests are stores of food. About a dozen fruits - apples, peaches, strawberries, bananas, etc. - dominate world consumption. There are probably about 3,000 more kinds of fruits in the tropics, of which 200 are widely eaten. Tens of thousands of other grains, vegetables, and forms of plant food are out there waiting to cure starvation and create greater variety on the dinner table, if they are allowed to survive. The winged bean of New Guinea, for instance, is full of protein, is entirely edible, and can be fried, roasted, ground into flour, or served as a hot beverage. And it grows to a length of 4 meters in a few weeks. The Amazonian babassu palm, still found in a natural state, offers the world’s highest yield of vegetable oil from its fruit. It can also feed livestock, produce thatching materials, and be burned for charcoal. Iguana meat is prized by many in the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists estimate forest-ranched iguanas can yield ten times the amount of meat as cattle on the same acreage of cleared land. Other less well-known, yet tasty, animals could produce much food without destroying their forest cover.

Much loss of forest cover, including loss of ancient forests, is due to harvesting for paper, at the rate of hundreds of millions of metric tons per year. There are less environmentally destructive ways to produce paper, including recycling, or the use of crops such as kenaf. Once an acre of forest is cut down and the trees sold for timber, its value of the land is often diminished. Some studies have shown that harvesting fruits, chocolate, substances such as latex, and vegetables can create more sustainable yield for a tropical farmer than a one-time timber harvest.

One approach currently being used around the world is to identify biodiversity “hot spots” and to concentrate on saving those areas first. In a tropical forest, areas with the most diverse species of trees also tend to harbor the most diverse groups of shrubs, plants, birds, insects, amphibians, fish, and other creatures. Hotspots are not all in forests: they can vary in terms of geography and habitat and in the kinds of organisms they shelter. However, they are useful in delineating and protecting biodiversity. In 1997, one conservation group estimated that the 17 most vibrant hot spots in the world occupied 1.3 percent of the planet’s land, yet protected 25 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species and 40 percent of plants. Clearly, well-maintained hot spots can begin to salvage the biological richness and potential of many nations, while mitigating the destruction of remaining wild areas. The Internet may become a tool in the service of forest conservation, posting and correlating the best data on deforestation and making it available worldwide. Global Forest Watch, an arm of the World Resources Institute, is attempting to create an international data and mapping network to track the pace of the destruction. Similar efforts may be made by other groups.

The world is beginning to wake up to the need to save forests. Governments are increasingly committed to forest conservation. In 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit, nations adopted the Forest Principles, the first-ever global consensus on the importance of forest conservation. In 1995, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests. David Sandalow adds, “Illegal logging may be the single greatest threat to tropical forests,” and commends some nations for having “made major commitments to address the problems.”

The United States is implementing its own Tropical Forest Conservation Act. In March, 2000, the United States committed itself to a debt-for-nature swap with Bangladesh, to help conserve Bangladeshi tropical forests. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. government added 262,400 hectares of giant sequoia trees in California to its extensive network of national parks and nature reserves. Corporations are beginning to see the value of sustainable use of forests. Home Depot, a major U.S. retailer, has announced it will stop selling wood products from environmentally sensitive areas. The American Forest and Paper Association has committed itself to a focus on sustainable forest management.

In 1997, the government of Bolivia, the Nature Conservancy, a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization, and American Electric Power provided funds and worked together to expand and protect an ecologically rich national park. The same year, a public-private partnership worked together to protect 4 million acres of rainforest in Suriname. In general, such partnerships involving many stakeholders, targeted to local conditions, seem to work the best. Agronomists are striving to continue to improve agricultural productivity, in order to make it less necessary to cut down forests for cropland. Around the world, 500 million people are thought to depend on forests for their livelihood - an incentive to preserve the health of forests and to protect them as a sustainable resource for future generations.

The world holds far more than the 40,000 or so species currently being utilized on a daily basis. That is why the exploratory research efforts of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries must go beyond simply cataloguing the experiences of local peoples. Although we have no precise idea of how many plant, animal, fungal, and microbial species populate the planet, there are at least 10 million of them. The living world is a vast cauldron of genetic variation: Most of it remains entirely unknown to us, yet much is undoubtedly of great potential use.

For good reason, much of the exploratory research has been focused on the tropical rain forests. Most of the terrestrial species of our planet reside in the Tropics, and tropical forests are disappearing at a frightening clip. Estimates vary, but 30 hectares per minute now seems, if anything, to be an underestimate. More recently, however, some attention has been shifted to the sea, the last great earthly frontier. We are, of course, ourselves a terrestrial species, having abandoned the sea to take up life on land some 350 million years ago. Until recently, our direct utilization of sea life has been restricted to fishing and to hunting marine mammals. This last great vestige of a hunting-gathering mode of existence until recently threatened to extirpate many whale and seal species and, as we have already seen, now threatens to collapse the most productive fisheries in the world.

Corals and sponges are but two of the major groups of marine invertebrate animals that live firmly rooted to the sea floor. They don’t move around, so they can’t escape when a predatory fish or crab comes by and tries to bite off a piece. These sessile creatures have evolved a stunning array of chemical defenses against such attacks — defenses that have recently begun to attract a lot of attention from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The case for the great diversity of living species as a storehouse of vital genetic variation is crystal clear. We have relied upon that variation increasingly since we developed agriculture, even as it has indeed seemed that we were abandoning nature. That reliance on the natural genetic storehouse will only increase as time goes on, a compelling reason why we must arrest the destruction of ecosystems and species that right now is systematically dismantling and destroying this vital resource.