Nothing wrong with GMOs: Dave Mackill pioneer interview
Channel: International Rice Research Institute
Date: 13/06/2011

In this Pioneer Interview excerpt, David Mackill, who departed the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org) as a principal scientist in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division in February 2011, discusses that, in his opinion, there is nothing wrong with GMOs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism . 

He was the program leader for rainfed rice production at IRRI and led the development of more than 20 rice cultivars adapted to the challenging growing conditions in southern Asia.  He also oversaw  the IRRI project Stress-Tolerant Rice for Poor Farmers in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa or STRASA - http://www.icrisat.org - for which he helped secure a grant worth US$19.9 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Over the last 28 years, Dr. Mackill held critical positions for rice genetics and breeding, including 10 years as a U.S. Department of Agriculture research geneticist stationed at the University of California, Davis. 

In the last 17 years, Dr. Mackill and colleagues identified and transferred a gene conferring submergence tolerance into new high-yielding rice varieties. Monsoonal rains plague southern Asia with flooding that destroys crops. These new rice strains are being adopted on a large scale and will translate into millions of tons of new rice for developing countries. He is now the strategic rice expert within the research and development arm of Mars Incorporated.

Interview excerpt on there is nothing wrong with GMOs:

"Wherever somebody asks me about Sub1 [flood-tolerant] rice, I emphasize that it is not GMO [genetically modified organism]. I mention this because if it were GMO, it could not be grown [in farmers' fields yet] but obviously that is not the case. 

At the moment, GMO rice is not allowed in any country that I am aware of although we expect it to come any day now.  In my opinion, I think that GMOs will be accepted at some point in the near future and it's going to give us a lot of tools for further improvement of rice that we don't have now. 

Some of the things we do now by conventional breeding are quite laborious, for example, combining several genes from different parents into a single variety. I think GM technology will give us a way to do that much quicker and easier. I can see that some day this will be used almost routinely to introduce "rice" genes into other rice varieties although that's not the current emphasis with GMO technology, but I think that it will come eventually. 

At the moment, we are looking at more exotic genes from other species that are not available in rice. This happens in nature, so my personal opinion is that there's nothing wrong with it. Every product has to be evaluated based on what it is and not how it was developed."