Improving Food Biotechnology Resources and Strategies in Developing Countries

摘要

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, ACCORDING TO ZILIN-skas (1993), will be unable to benefit fully from biotechnology, in terms of economic development and problem solving, unless they are able to utilize results from indigenous biotech-nological research. He further argued that in most developing countries a gap separates the research establishment from the applied sector and that two factors create and sustain the gap: (1) mechanisms that promote and facilitate technology transfer do not exist or are poorly developed in developing countries, and (2) economic, legal, and social barriers exist that prevent university-industry cooperation. If we are in agreement with the notion that developing countries need to be able to rely on indigenous biotechnolog-ical research, then indigenous resources and biotechnological advantages of developing countries become crucial (Table 1). The potential of existing genetic resources is exemplified in Table 2, where known and estimated numbers of some biological species are presented. The facts that only 5-15% of the plant species have been subjected to even the most rudimentary screening (Baladrian et al., 1985), that estimations of the existing plant species vary by 500,000 species, and that only 5% of the estimated fungi are known clearly demonstrate the genetic potential available for biotechnological applications or for implementation of biotechnological tools.