Achieving Uncommon Things: Biotechnology Network in Asia

Individual genius is good, but organized collaboration may be better. AMBIONET team members from Indonesia in the lab with Luz George, project coordinator (back row, left) and Tony Perez of the Asian Development Bank.

The first slide appeared on the screen and B.M. Prasanna read it through to the last sentence. " 'The purpose of an organization is to enable common men'—and of course we also mean women—'to do uncommon things.' These words are from Peter Drucker, the pioneer of management theory," Prasanna explained, "and they speak directly to why we are here today."

The occasion was the initiation of Phase II of a project to develop the Asian Maize Biotechnology Network (AMBIONET). The meeting, held in 2002 in Indonesia, involved research teams from the participating countries—Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, China (two teams), Vietnam, and India—as well as resource persons from CIMMYT headquarters and Antonio "Tony" Perez from AMBIONET's primary financial supporter, the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Other significant donors include CIMMYT and the national agricultural research systems of the research teams.

AMBIONET was launched in 1998. Perez and David Hoisington, director of CIMMYT's Applied Biotechnology Center, envisioned creating a participatory forum that would employ biotechnology to catalyze increased maize productivity in Asia's developing countries. Collaboration and information sharing would advance the aims of all the teams. CIMMYT would provide technical training, backstopping, and guidance through project coordinator Maria Luz George, based in the Philippines, and scientists at CIMMYT headquarters.

A M B I O N E T:
Getting Students into the Lab

Working at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, B.M. Prasanna is called on to teach as well as conduct research. In the past, students left with an excellent theoretical background but little practical experience. This has changed. "With AMBIONET support, I've trained a number of students on how to employ markers in their research," he says. Students from Vietnam, Iran, and Ethiopia have also worked toward advanced degrees in Prasanna's lab.

During an exchange visit to Prasanna's lab, Shihuang Zhang, AMBIONET-China Country Coordinator, witnessed the effectiveness of this approach. "I saw all these young people in his lab and I thought I should take this back to China. Our universities have many graduate students but they do not have enough money to support research. On the other hand, under recent reforms, my institute is cutting back on paid staff. So we opened our doors and have the students work with us, and in turn we help them prepare their theses. Perhaps this approach is already popular elsewhere, but for China this is very newand very useful."

The teams established research objectives to meet national and network needs. One of the objectives, the molecular profiling of maize, has already had considerable impact in China, the world's second largest maize producer, and in India, a major Asian producer. Shihuang Zhang, the AMBIONET-China country coordinator, reflects that when the network was initiated, there was considerable debate among Chinese maize breeders about pedigrees and heterotic groups. "Experienced breeders were arguing that we needed maybe 12 or 16 groups or patterns, but this was slowing progress. We went to work with the molecular markers, and today our knowledge about our materials is much better—our breeders work on the basis of 3 groups and 2 patterns, and even more important, they have changed their approach."

Prasanna tells a similar story. Indian maize breeders were skeptical about molecular genetics. Then along came the Plant Variety Protection Act. Now, says Prasanna, they are interested in fingerprinting their maize lines to firmly establish their identities: "I have more requests than my lab can handle."

Working on another AMBIONET objective, to use molecular markers to accelerate breeding for traits of interest, teams used molecular data from a cross previously mapped by CIMMYT, combined with phenotypic data produced in five locations in India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand, to identify genes for downy mildew resistance. Five quantitative trait loci (QTL) that significantly influence downy mildew resistance were identified, three of which explain up to 50% of the phenotypic variance for reaction to downy mildew disease. With genetic linkage maps constructed in the AMBIONET-China lab and phenotypic data from Beijing, researchers identified five QTLs conferring resistance to sugarcane mosaic virus, explaining up to 27% of the phenotypic variance. By verifying the presence of these QTLs in their lines and varieties, breeders can be sure that they are developing plants that resist these destructive diseases.

Most gratifying for network coordinator George was simply getting the network up and running well. "Our primary goal, to form an environment where scientists could work together to apply new science to maize production, was realized, but it took some work—about 80 scientists trained at 4 workshops, 12 extended exchange visits, and contributions to 10 graduate degrees. With support from CIMMYT and the national programs, and leadership from the network scientists, we are moving forward." Team leaders discuss their experiences in "AMBIONET: Getting Students into the Lab" (see right) and "AMBIONET: Focus on Thailand".

The funding of a second phase was an endorsement of AMBIONET's approach. "One goal for phase two," says George, "is to make the national teams and the network self-sustaining." To make this critical transition, training in grant writing has been assigned high priority. On the scientific side, genetic fingerprinting and mapping activities in support of breeding are targeted to quality protein maize (QPM), drought tolerance, genetic diversity, and resistance to banded leaf and sheath blight (an emerging threat in intensive maize/rice cropping systems). These objectives too will be supported with training, as will bioinformatics.