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Moderated conference on Genomics in Food and Agriculture

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Biotech-Mod3 <[log in to unmask]>
Wed, 6 Mar 2013 11:47:11 +0100
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This is Olivier Hanotte. I am a livestock geneticist working at the University of Nottingham (UK) for the last 4 years before that I was working for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) institute.

In my opinion, the opportunities of genomics for the livestock and plant sector of the "tropics" is more on the new perspectives it is offering rather than new solutions to old problems. Animals and plants breeders know what they are doing. They have done it very well for centuries and will do as well for the coming generations. Genomics may help to speed up the process of breeding selection but fundamentally, it will not change the modus operandi, breeding associated to phenotypic and/or genotypic markers... It will be very helpful but no new thinking, "just" a new, very powerful tool for the same thinking.

Genomics will have a stronger impact on agricultural productivity if it can offer new solutions to our problems. We may need here a small paradigm shift in our thinking. A supermarket thinking where the buyer is the farmer, and where on the shelves we find the products: the livestock and crops genotypes, a large diversity of phenotypes to choose from. I think all the "ingredients" are here to make it work (and one of them are the biobanks). It is not going to be easy to make it work, but we have to prepare ourselves now; it is a process in the making.

In other words, when its full potential will be unleashed, genomic information will provide the missing link: the genotype barcode carrying the phenotypic information, the labeling of your product. Genomics could offer the farmers the opportunity to choose the best genotypes for livestock/plant productivity for a specific livestock productivity environment at a specific time point. Farmers will be able to buy, introduce, use, breed plant livestock genotypes knowing in advance what they will get at the end (at least with much less uncertainty).

Rather than rely on a silver bullet genotype a super crop or livestock which by definition will always require a specific production and market chain environment; genomics may offer the opportunities at last to exploit fully the diversity of our livestock and crops an important way forward for sustainable agricultural productivity.

Equally important will be tight up the agricultural genomics revolution with other ongoing technological revolutions providing increased global and local geo-spatial and environmental information. 

The next question is what is the best optimum modus operandi (framework) to be developed to make it work....

Olivier Hanotte PhD, FSB
Professor of Population and Conservation Genetics
The University of Nottingham
School of Biology
University Park
NG7 2RD Nottingham
United Kingdom
Tel  + 44 (0)115 9513256
Fax + 44 (0)115 9513251
E-mail: olivier.hanotte (at) nottingham.ac.uk
Skype: redjunglefowl
www.nottingham.ac.uk/biology 

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