Mistra portrait: |
Christie E. Williams |
Amongst mosquitoes and genes
A combination of new genes for the wheat plant would make it resistant to the Hessian fly – a plague for wheat farmers. Gene manipulation is controversial for many, but Christie E. Williams believes that decisions regarding its use must be based on knowledge.
Christie E. Williams is Professor of Molecular Biology at the Department of Entomology at Purdue University in the United States. She is particularly interested in the Hessian fly; a small insect that causes large economic losses and lots of worry for wheat farmers. Actually, it is not the fly per se that she is interested in, but how to stop its advance. And the interaction between the fly and wheat plant. When the fly lands on the wheat plant, the plant begins to produce nourishment for its invader. The nutritional loss prevents the wheat plant from growing as it should. Therefore, researchers are trying to find a way to make the wheat plant resistant to the fly, i.e., to make it stop producing nourishment for the fly. That would make the plant uninteresting in the eyes of the fly. Plant breeding“We are trying to find a combination of genes that we can transfer to the wheat plant. We are actually building upon a tradition of plant breeding that has been practiced for a long time. American farmers have been trying for the past 60 years – through cross fertilization – to prevent the advance of the Hessian fly,” she says.The problem is that the protection – or resistance – that has been achieved in the plant has only worked for a limited time. Afterwards, the plant has modified its genes and reverted to producing nourishment for the fly. That has led to a continuous search for new ways to stop the fly, which costs both time and money. Therefore, she wants to be able to provide the plant with a combination of genes, with the hope that the protection against the fly will last for a longer period of time.
Increased food production
Even if the results are not directly transferable to other species (for example rice), the method – a molecular strategy – is possible to apply to other crops. That can be important, because the production of rice, wheat and other crops needs to increase globally – by as much as 40 percent according to the International Food Policy Research Institute – for the food to be enough for the population increase that is anticipated by 2020.
Williams is aware that that the research she performs is controversial, and questioned by many the world over. But she is not upset by being questioned and it is not something that occupies her on a daily basis. “I understand that people feel uneasy or fearful about genetics and the fact that we study how one can move different genes around to achieve different effects. That some people worry about genetically-modified crops, or plants that have been genetically manipulated, spreading across farms is understandable. Everyone has the right to make their own decisions, but they must be based on factual knowledge. For me, molecular biology is about plant breeding, but at a genetic level,” she says.
Sustainable control of insect pests
The alternative to gene manipulation for the purpose of stopping insect pests thus far has been to use chemical pesticides. “And that isn’t a good alternative either from environmental and health perspectives,” Christie E. Williams says. She is in Stockholm for the evaluation of the Mistra programme PlantCom. The goal of the programme is to create a sustainable control strategy based on a combination of new cropping systems, new cultivars with multi-gene resistance against insect pests and, increased resistance through the use of natural enemies. Williams feels a relationship to programme, which in a way has the same goals that she has. And she is impressed by the researchers’ results thus far. “It is a great idea to evaluate a programme at its halfway point. Often, researchers are granted financing and then left to their fate. Through evaluations performed of ongoing research programmes, the researchers can receive advice and support about how to proceed and what, perhaps, is not worth continuing. In that way, financers of research can ensure that their investments are actually useful,” she says.
