Download Charles Darwin symposium - National Museum of Australia

Charles Darwin symposium
Thursday 26 February 2009
9.30am to 3.30pm
Free
Bookings on (02) 6208 5021
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
As part of the Museum's programs for the Darwin exhibition, there will be a one-day
symposium at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra on Thursday 26
February 2009.
This symposium will be an opportunity to examine the life and times of Charles
Darwin, the impact of his published work and his scientific legacy. It aims to
encourage discussion between a range of expert presenters and with audience
members.
The Museum is aiming to create a forum for examining and understanding the life,
work and legacy of Charles Darwin.
The symposium will be hosted by Robyn Williams AM, well known science writer
and radio presenter. He has presented The Science Show on ABC Radio National
since it began in 1975. His other weekly programs on ABC Radio are In Conversation
and Ockham's Razor.
Exhibition costs apply. Open 9am – 5pm daily (closed Christmas Day)
Lawson Crescent Acton Peninsula Canberra ACT 2600
Freecall 1800 026 132 www.nma.gov.au
The National Museum of Australia is an Australian Government Agency
CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
The Darwin symposium will consist of three interlocking themes across three
sessions. Each session will include three presenters ending with a panel discussion
inviting audience participation.
Theme One | Session One | Darwin: a concise story
Charles Darwin, the Shropshire lad and son of a wealthy society doctor, was
originally intended to join the clergy but was more interested in collecting beetles. His
fascination with the natural world was encouraged by a number of Anglican clergy
one of whom recommended him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for the unpaid
position of gentleman's companion to Robert FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle.
This session will explore Darwin the man and his voracious interest in the science of
nature, the prevailing scientific and religious views of the era and Darwin's
experiences on HMS Beagle, with particular emphasis on his time in Australia and
subsequent return to England.
Chair: Nicholas Drayson
Presenters: Professor Iain McCalman, Professor Tom Frame, Emeritus Professor
Frank Nicholas
Theme Two | Session Two | Darwin: On the Origin of Species
In 1859 Darwin's ideas were published in his seminal work On the Origin of Species.
What are the 'big themes' that Darwin expressed in this publication and how did they
contribute to scientific understanding of the natural world in Victorian England? What
were the social, political, scientific, philosophical and theological reactions to this
work?
This session will also explore the many misinterpretations of Darwin's ideas and how
they have been used to support a number of racist and imperialist ideologies.
Chair: Dr Libby Robin
Presenters: Professor Paul Turnbull, Dr Barry Butcher, Tony Barta, Honorary
Research Associate, La Trobe University
Theme Three | Session Three | Darwin: the legacy
Darwin's ideas remain the foundation of biological science, establishing the basis for
our scientific understanding of the natural world. In recent years new technologies
have given us the power to map and manipulate the natural world in ways that would
have been inconceivable during Darwin's time.
How have Darwin's ideas led to current scientific research? Where is all this taking us
and will science deliver a better future? And let's not ignore the ongoing debate
between evolution and creationism in the public sphere!
Chair: Dr Bernadette Hince
Presenters: Professor Colin Groves, Professor Neil Ormerod, Dr Jeremy Burdon
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
PROGRAM
9.30am–10am
Registration
10am
Welcome
Craddock Morton, Director, National Museum of Australia
Robyn Williams AM, Chair
Session One
10.15am–11.30am
Darwin: a concise story
Chair: Nicholas Drayson
10.15am
A Lunatic Idea: British Science and Evolution on the Eve of
Darwin’s Origin of Species
Professor Iain McCalman
10.35am
Charles Darwin: His Character and Convictions
Professor Tom Frame
10.55am
Darwin’s Experiences in Australia
Emeritus Professor Frank Nicholas
11.15am
Questions and answers
Panel and audience
11.30am
Morning tea
Session Two
11.50am–1.05pm
Darwin: On the Origin of Species
Chair: Dr Libby Robin
11.50am
The Origin of Species, its reception and the construal of human
evolutionary history
Professor Paul Turnbull
12.10pm
Social reactions to Origin
Dr Barry Butcher
12.30pm
Darwin and Social Darwinism: the political use and abuse of
natural selection
Tony Barta
12:50pm
Questions and answers
Panel and audience
1.05pm
Lunch
Includes the launch of Professor Tom Frame’s book, Evolution in the
Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia by Robyn Williams, AM.
Session Three
1.55pm–3.30pm
Darwin: the legacy
Chair: Dr Bernadette Hince
1.55pm
Human evolution: fossils surprising, fossils predicted
Professor Colin Groves
2.15pm
Evolution and creationism
Professor Neil Ormerod
2.35pm
Evolutionary change in agriculture – the past, present and future
Dr Jeremy Burdon
2.55pm
Questions and answers
Panel and audience
3.10pm–3.30pm
Close
Robyn Williams, AM
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
CHAIR AND PRESENTERS
SYMPOSIUM MC
Robyn Williams AM
Biography
Nationally and internationally renowned science communicator Robyn Williams is
perhaps best known as the presenter of ABC Radio National’s The Science Show
since it began in 1975. His other weekly programs on ABC Radio are In Conversation
and Ockham’s Razor.
Robyn has also presented programs such as Nature of Australia and Catalyst,
appeared on World Safari with David Attenborough, and he has conducted countless
interviews with scientists for ABC TV.
Robyn has written numerous books, received awards, taken up fellowships at
prestigious universities, and was elected a National Living Treasure by the National
Trust. He even has had a star named after him by the Sydney Observatory.
SESSION ONE | Darwin: a concise story
CHAIR
Nick Drayson
Nicholas Drayson is a novelist and nature writer. His nature writing has included
columns in Good Weekend magazine and The Australian Women's Weekly, and the
winning essay for the inaugural Wildcare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize. Both his
latest novel Love and the Platypus and his previous novel Confessing a Murder have
natural history themes. Nicholas has also worked for the National Museum of
Australia as a curator and consultant.
PRESENTERS
Professor Iain McCalman
Iain McCalman was born in Nyasaland, Africa and was educated in both Zimbabwe
and Australia. He is currently Research Professor at the University of Sydney and is
a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Academy of the Social
Sciences in Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He
has held many Visiting Research Fellowships in Britain and the United States,
including at All Souls, Oxford and, most recently, a Mellon Visiting Professor at the
University of Technology, Pasadena, California. He was awarded the Inaugural Vice
Chancellor’s Prize for Teaching Excellence at the Australian National University in
1994 and an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007 for services to history and the
humanities.
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Iain McCalman has published numerous articles in British, American and European
journals, on modern British, European and imperial cultural history. He has also
written and edited a range of books, including Radical Underworld, Gold: Lost
Histories and Forgotten Objects of Australia (2001), The Romantic Age: An Oxford
Companion to British Culture, 1776-1832 (2001) and The Last Alchemist. Count
Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason (2003). He has been a historical
consultant and narrator for a number of BBC, ABC and other television and film
documentaries. He has just completed a book titled Darwin’s Armada: Four Scientific
Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and the Battle for Evolution which is the basis of a
television series currently in production and of exhibitions at the Australian National
Maritime Museum and the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney.
Abstract
A lunatic idea: British science and evolution on the eve of Darwin’s On the
Origin of Species
Undergraduate examination papers are fond of posing the question: ‘Was Darwin’s
theory of evolution overdue or in advance of its time?’ Like all such questions it is
probably unanswerable, but it does contain a fascinating paradox. Much is made of
the hurricane of resistance that greeted Darwin’s On the Origin of Species of 1859, a
book that famously elaborated his theory of evolution by natural selection and
triggered a revolution in the history of science and of modern mankind.
Despite bitter opposition to Darwin’s theory, it became virtual orthodoxy among
British scientists within a decade. By the time of Darwin’s death in 1882, some of his
disciples were complaining that natural selection had become a dogma. The rapid
triumph of the Darwinian revolution suggests that British scientists were already
prepared for its explosive impact. Moreover, the fact that a young working-class
naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, arrived at the same theory independently of Darwin
in 1858 suggests that ideas of evolution were in the air.
In this paper I will explore dominant scientific attitudes to ideas of evolution in Britain
during the years leading up to the publication of Origin. I will explain why evolution
was so widely regarded as a lunatic theory prior to 1859, why it was resisted so
fiercely on Darwin’s first publication of Origin and yet triumphed in British science so
rapidly after that.
The Right Reverend Professor Tom Frame
Tom Frame was born in Sydney and joined the Royal Australian Navy College,
HMAS Creswell, as a 16-year-old cadet midshipman in 1979. After serving as
Research Officer to the Chief of Naval Staff and completing a PhD on the HMAS
Voyager disaster, he resigned from the navy in late 1992 to complete a Masters
degree in theology and train for the Anglican priesthood.
Ordained in 1993, he held parish appointments in Australia and England. He has
been Bishop to the Australian Defence Force (2001-07), a Visiting Fellow in the
School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (19992003), Patron of the Armed Forces Federation of Australia (2002-06), a member of
the Council of the Australian War Memorial (2004-07) and has judged the inaugural
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History (2006-07). He has been Director of St
Mark’s National Theological Centre and Professor of Theology at Charles Sturt
University since November 2006.
Bishop Frame is the author or editor of 24 books including HMAS Sydney: Loss and
Controversy (1993), Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention (2004),
The Life and Death of Harold Holt (2005), Church and State: Australia’s Imaginary
Wall (2006), Anglicans in Australia (2007) and Children on Demand: The Ethics of
Defying Nature (2008). In 2009 he will release two new books: Evolution in the
Antipodes: Charles Darwin and Australia and Losing My Religion: Unbelief in
Australia.
Abstract
Charles Darwin: his character and convictions
Charles Darwin is simultaneously the most revered and the most reviled scientist in
modern history. His work has upset orthodoxies, challenged conventions and
provoked controversy. Darwin was, however, a very genial and gracious man who
disliked conflict and avoided confrontation. This presentation will offer a personal
profile of the great Victorian naturalist and explore the extent to which his
temperament affected the course and content of his research and writing, and the
degree to which his character influenced the reception his ideas received in both the
scientific and religious communities. After describing the impact of his scientific views
on the social and spiritual outlook of his family, this presentation will conclude with a
brief summation of Darwin’s religious views and his attitudes towards scientific
debate, social discourse and religious dialogue.
Emeritus Professor Frank Nicholas
Frank Nicholas is Emeritus Professor of Animal Genetics in the Faculty of Veterinary
Science at the University of Sydney. For 34 years, he lectured in animal genetics in
the Faculties of Veterinary Science and Agriculture at the University of Sydney and
conducted research into a range of genetic issues relevant to animal production
and/or animal health. He is the creator and curator of Online Mendelian Inheritance in
Animals (http://omia.angis.org.au/), a comparative knowledge base of inherited
disorders across the animal kingdom. With the late Professor John Edwards, he
developed the Oxford Grid site (http://oxgrid.angis.org.au/), providing visualisations of
evolutionary relationships in terms of the extent of conserved synteny across
sequenced animal species and beyond. With his wife Jan, he co-authored Charles
Darwin in Australia, in which a complete transcription of the Australian section of
Darwin’s Beagle diary is illustrated with contemporary paintings by former Beagle
shipmate Conrad Martens.
Abstract
Darwin’s experiences in Australia
Charles Darwin visited Australia for two months in 1836. He did so as the companion
to the captain of HMS Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, who had been instructed by the
Admiralty to complete the Royal Navy’s surveys of South America, and then to
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
circumnavigate the globe, taking every opportunity to check chronometrical estimates
of longitude at ports along the way, including Sydney, Hobart and King George’s
Sound. During the Beagle’s visit to Australia, Darwin rode a horse from Sydney to
Bathurst, walked and rode extensively in and around Hobart, and walked in the
environs of King George Sound. His firsthand encounter with Australian animals
caused him to ask (in the Sydney section of his diary) whether there had been more
than one creator. After returning to England, Darwin maintained correspondence with
Australian-based former Beagle shipmates Philip Gidley King (Jnr), John Wickham
and Syms Covington and with other Australians such as Phillip Parker King and the
geologist William Braithwaite Clarke, all of whom sent him samples (particularly
barnacles) and/or information that he incorporated into his publications. Darwin’s
Australian experience did not provide a Eureka moment. Instead, what he saw in
Australia, and his subsequent continual gathering of information from Australia,
contributed to the wealth of evidence he assembled from around the world showing
that (a) species have evolved and (b) evolution can be explained by a combination of
natural selection, correlated responses to selection, and chance events, all operating
on the vast store of heritable variation that exists in nature.
SESSION TWO | Darwin: On the Origin of Species
CHAIR
Dr Libby Robin
Libby Robin is an historian of science and environmental ideas. She is a Senior
Research Fellow at the National Museum of Australia's Centre for Historical
Research and a Senior Fellow at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at
the Australian National University.
Libby has published widely in history, Australian studies, museum studies,
environmental science and the ecological humanities. Her most recent book, How a
Continent Created a Nation, won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian
History in 2007. Her history of ornithology in Australia, The Flight of the Emu, won the
inaugural Victorian Premier's Literary Prize for Science Writing in 2003.
PRESENTERS
Professor Paul Turnbull
Paul Turnbull is a historian at Griffith University who has written extensively on the
uses of human remains in scientific research on the classification and evolutionary
genealogy of human races 1790-1920. His recent publications include “Scientific
Theft of Remains in Colonial Australia”, Australian Indigenous Law Review (2007),
and “Theft in the Name of Science”, Griffith Review, no. 21 (2008). Paul is also
known internationally for making history in networked digital media, and is the creator
of South Seas, a major online resource exploring James Cook’s first Pacific voyage,
1768-1771, located at http://southseas.nla.gov.au.
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Abstract
The Origin of Species, its reception and the construal of human evolutionary
history
In 1886, Robert Brough Smyth, mining engineer, amateur ethnographer and author
of the compendious Aborigines of Victoria (1878) gave a lecture on Darwin’s Origin of
Species at the Bendigo Working Men’s Club. Smyth began by declaring that
Providence had bestowed on man two books of supreme wisdom: the Bible and The
Origin of Species.
One wonders what Darwin would have made of this claim given his conviction that
nature in no way reflected the operation of Divine will. However, regardless of how
Darwin might have reacted, Smyth’s lecture illustrates an important point: Darwinian
interpretations of natural history in the half-century or so after the publication of The
Origin of Species were diverse and often stood at odds with what Darwin might have
said.
In my paper I will attempt briefly to summarize Darwin’s key arguments in The Origin
of Species then say something about their diverse reception in British and continental
European scientific and intellectual circles between 1860 and 1900. My concern will
be to highlight what contemporaries saw as the strengths and failings in Darwin’s
account of how speciation actually occurred. I will also briefly look at how, especially
in France and several influential German scientific communities, Darwin’s theory was
rejected by researchers in favour of either evolutionary schema grounded in earlier
transmutationist explanations of organic diversity among earth’s myriad life-forms, or
the idea that one species could not transform into another, and that variations within
a species were essentially pathological. The presence of these alternative schema
was also to influence early Darwinian thinking.
I will then say something about how the natural history of humanity came to be
envisaged in Darwinian terms from the 1860s to 1900, focusing in particular on how
several scientists associated with Australian museums in those decades construed
the evolutionary genealogy and probable destiny of Indigenous Australian and Pacific
peoples.
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Dr Barry W Butcher
Dr Butcher is a Senior Lecturer and has taught at Deakin University since 1984. His
research interests and publications have centred on the history of science in
Australia in areas ranging from geophysics, medicine, animal health and evolutionary
theory. He has presented papers in numerous national and international
conferences. In 1992 he completed a doctoral thesis on the reception of Darwinism in
Australia, 1835-1914. He is currently undertaking research in the relationship
between science and religion.
Abstract
Social reactions to Origin
This paper will explore the work of some notable 19th century Australians who
responded positively to Darwin’s works, situated in the wider context of the changing
pattern of Australian culture from 1860 to 1900. Among those whose contribution to
the discussion of Darwinian Theory will be discussed are newspaper proprietor
Edward Wilson, botanist Robert Fitzgerald, anthropologists Alfred Howitt and Walter
Baldwin Spencer and economist WE Hearn.
There already exists a great deal of published work on each of these individuals and
their support of Darwin. This presentation will re-visit a claim I made nearly twenty
years ago that in Australia there was a strong, vigorous heterodox tradition in the
response to Darwin that calls into question claims that being geographically
peripheral equated with scientific backwardness. I will argue that my original
contention can now be further supported by more recent work.
Tony Barta
Tony Barta is an Honorary Research Associate in History at La Trobe University,
where he has taught for many years. He has written on modern German history
(especially the town of Dachau), on film and historical understanding, and on the
theory and actuality of genocide, particularly in Australia. He is a frequent contributor
to The Journal of Genocide Research and his overview of the the genocide question
in Australian history is in Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of Genocide (2008).
His essay, ‘Mr Darwin’s shooters: on natural selection and the naturalizing of
genocide’ appeared in 2007.
Abstract
Darwin and Social Darwinism: the political use and abuse of natural selection
To what extent were Darwin’s ideas misused by others? Darwin himself endorsed
eugenics (founded by his cousin Francis Galton) and was fascinated by purposeful
breeding, ie unnatural selection. Although ‘Social Darwinism’ was inspired by
Darwin’s historical observations rather than his biological science, in both Germany
and Australia the influence of Darwinian eugenics has had tragic effects.
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
SESSION THREE | Darwin: the legacy
CHAIR
Dr Bernadette Hince
Bernadette Hince is a historian and lexicographer. She is a Visiting Fellow at the
Australian National Dictionary Centre, Australian National University. Her main
research interests are the history and words of the Polar regions, and the
environmental history of sub-Antarctic islands. Her book The Antarctic dictionary: a
complete guide to Antarctic English (CSIRO/Museum Victoria, 2000) documents the
development of a specialized vocabulary of cold words.
PRESENTERS
Professor Colin Groves
Colin Groves earned his PhD from London University. He has worked in mammalian
systematics and evolution, especially primates, and has published some 200 peerreviewed papers and half a dozen books, on such topics as the taxonomy of primates
and other mammals, evolutionary modes, and human evolution.
Abstract
Human evolution: fossils surprising, fossils predicted
The fossil history of human evolution is increasingly well-known, though of course, as
with any progressing research, there are still unknowns. Particular problems include
the nature of the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees, which of
various candidates actually do belong in the earliest stage of the human lineage, the
amount of diversification in the human clade, the origins of the ‘erectine grade’, and
how many times there were dispersals of hominins out of Africa. Some parts of the
human fossil record appear to depict gradual change, others seem better interpreted
by the model of punctuated equilibria.
Professor Neil Ormerod
Neil Ormerod is Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University. He has
doctorates in theology and in pure mathematics and is widely published in Australia
and overseas. His latest book, Creation, Grace and Redemption received a
commendation at the US Catholic Book awards for 2008 and he is currently working
on a book on God, science and evolution with US theologian Cynthia Crysdale.
Abstract
Evolution and creationism
The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in the first decade of the 20th century, could
find no objection to the theory of evolution on the basis of faith. One hundred years
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
later Cardinal Schönborn has stated that, ‘Evolution in the sense of common ancestry
might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned
process of random variation and natural selection - is not’. Debates over creationism,
‘creation science’ and ‘intelligent design’ have muddied the theological waters of
what was clearly and correctly held over one hundred years ago. At the heart of the
problem lie questions of divine causation. Get those right and the problem
evaporates.
Dr Jeremy Burdon
Dr Burdon is an evolutionary biologist with particular interests in plant-microbe
interactions. He is currently Chief of the Division of Plant Industry, CSIRO (since
2003) and in that role is responsible for a broad range of research into the
performance of major Australian crops including cereals (especially wheat), cotton,
sugarcane and grapes. Since joining CSIRO in 1978 as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow,
Dr Burdon has spent time as a Fulbright Scholar and E.C. Stakman Visiting
Professor at the USDA Cereal Rust Laboratory in Minnesota, U.S.A. and as a Visiting
Professor in the Department of Ecological Botany at the University of Umeå,
Sweden.
Dr Burdon’s active research interests encompass problems involving pathogens of
agricultural crops, and understanding the complexities of the interplay of parasitic
and symbiotic interactions in natural systems. In these and related areas he has
published ~180 scientific articles, 2 books and 3 edited volumes. In recent years, his
work has been recognized through the award of an honorary Doctorate by Umeå
University, Sweden (1996), election to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of
Science (1996), the American Phytopathological Society (2003), the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences (2004), and through honorary membership of the Mycological
Society of America. He was awarded the Gottschalk Medal by the Australian
Academy of Science in 1987, an Australian Centenary Medal in 2003, and received
the EC Stakman Award from the University of Minnesota in 2003. He has served on
the editorial boards of the Australian Journal of Botany (1987-1992), Euphytica
(1987-1999) and Ecology Letters (1999-2002). Currently, Dr Burdon is a member of
the editorial boards of Oecologia (1990-) and the Journal of Ecology (2003-).
Abstract
Evolutionary change in agriculture – the past, present and future
Ever since the beginnings of agriculture and man’s first attempts at plant
domestication, humans have unconsciously and then consciously adapted plants to
suit their needs. Some changes, especially those involving characters subject to
simple genetic control have occurred rapidly (e.g. loss of seed-shattering; reduced
awn angle), while others often controlled by many genes (e.g. increased grain size)
have occured more slowly.
Adaptation and evolution have been a significant part of the development of modern
agriculture. The extent and reach of this evolutionary change has also varied over
time. Initially, most changes occurred through simple selection of one character over
another within the primary gene-pool; later as such sources have been exhausted,
desired characters have been acquired from other species – sometimes through
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CHARLES DARWIN SYMPOSIUM
Thursday 26 February 2009, 9.30am to 3.30pm
Visions Theatre, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
natural hybridization, other times through crosses involving more distantly related
species in the secondary or tertiary gene-pools.
The selective environment in which crops grow has also changed over time thereby
imposing a drive for further change in the crops themselves. Thus farmers growing
crops with an eye towards stable yields may achieve these through within-crop
genetic diversity. More recently, however, much of agriculture has responded to
rapidly increasing human population sizes and urbanization by increasing scale and
specialization with larger and larger areas of more and more genetically uniform
crops being planted. The shift from a genetically diverse to a genetically uniform crop
strategy has led to many evolutionary changes, one particularly intriguing one being
the development of an “arms race” between breeders and some pathogens with the
release of new resistant cultivars selecting for novel virulent pathogen races.
Into the future - quo vadis? Accessing traits in the secondary, tertiary, quaternary
gene-pools and beyond is increasingly difficult and largely cannot be achieved by
conventional means. This is where GM technologies come in. Are the outcomes of
GM approaches to crops qualitatively different to those that have applied for
centuries? Transgenes, either deployed or currently being developed for plants,
cover a wide range of traits including ones directly impinging on consumer choice /
wellbeing (e.g. golden rice) as well as others that reduce input costs (e.g. Bt insect
resistance) or increase productivity (e.g. herbicide resistance). GM technologies
clearly extend the reach of breeders beyond the traditionally accessible germplasm
pools and will result in crops expressing evolutionarily novel characteristics. Such
modifications need to be considered on a case-by-case basis but together these
general trait areas can make further substantial contributions to improved
environmental outcomes, reduced use of non-renewable resources, an increased
ability of agriculture to meet rising food demands, and improved human health.
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