science matters : autumn 2009

Linking the science to the marketplace

Persuading plants to produce more food

From green vegetables to watermelons,from barley to peat, helping growersproduce nutritious food

Special article – an external perspectiveon nutrition from Ghana

Healthy plants,healthy peopleThis special food and nutrition issueshows how we are ensuring thathealthy, nutritious food isavailable across the globe

sciencematters

Keeping abreast of Syngenta R&D Autumn 09

Contents

Food and Nutrition – healthy plants, healthy people

Food and nutrition – linking the science to the marketplace

Persuading plants to produce more food

Reaping the Health Benefits of Green Vegetables and salads

Food safety is high on the menu in China

What a wonderful fruit the watermelon has become

Syngenta goes back to its gardening roots

Barley: a crop to celebrate, and to celebrate with

Is it safe? Explaining food safety to the food industry

Health and nutrition – food supply from an African perspective

Out and about

Science & Technology Prize – views from previous winners

Over 30 years of creativity in chemistry – an interview with Mike Turnbull

Editor’s comments – Food and Nutrition, reflections on how Syngentais engaging with farmers in Africa

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Cover photograph: From brewing to food, barley is an important crop worldwideThis page: Barley seedlings

The 19th International Congress of Nutrition will take place in October. This congress, which happens only once every four years, will look at“Nutrition Security for All”. It is designed to provide society with innovative solutions to the present and future challenges of securing the needfor safe and adequate food supply, thereby improving the quality of life of peoples and communities around the world. Syngenta plays asignificant role in this area and is the theme of this edition of Science Matters.

Access to safe, healthy food is a fundamental human right, but unfortunately one that many people do not have. As the world’s populationgrows from 6.5 billion today to a projected 9 billion in 20501 we will need twice as much food as we do now. However, we only have one planet.Since we also need to conserve biodiversity and preserve ecologically sensitive areas like the rainforests, we have to increase yields on theland we have now. In fact, urbanization will inevitably reduce the amount of available agricultural land and we will have to grow more from less(see www.growmorefromless.com).

As one of world’s leading companies in agriculture, Syngenta is committed to raising crop yields and quality through our world-class science,innovative research and new technologies, which are focused on the discovery and development of novel products for agriculture. This editionillustrates how we are helping to achieve this essential goal by ensuring farmers and growers have access to the right technology. The articlesalso demonstrate how we work at all levels within the food chain to ensure the availability of healthy nutritious food. Jonathan Shoham setsthe scene, linking our science to the marketplace. Higher yields not only address the need to intensify productivity on available agricultural landbut also lead directly to higher farmer profitability; this has the additional effect of reducing poverty and increasing health in poorer countrieswhere a large proportion of the population are smallholders. An external view is provided by Professor Margaret Armar-Klemesu from Ghana,who writes about food supply and health from an African perspective. She details the link between nutrition and access to fresh, healthy foodand points out that obesity is also an issue in poorer countries where cheap “street food” displaces freshly cooked fresh foods, resulting inan increase in health issues.

Food safety is rarely out of the news and, over the past few years, food scares ranging from BSE and E. coli poisoning are real issues concerningus all. Syngenta is engaged in the debate on food safety and security globally and we have a key role to play to ensure we all have access tosafe food. Colin Wang discusses how Syngenta is working to ensure the safe stewardship of sustainable agriculture in China’s complex foodsupply system. Syngenta goes beyond the invention and development of innovative products to training in the safe and best use of ourtechnologies. We invest heavily to ensure our products are safe and that farmers and growers are properly trained on how to use them safely.

When looking into the future, a real challenge facing us is the regulators and policy maker’s decisions about the farmer’s better access toagricultural technologies. The European Union has moved away from science-based risk assessment to one based on hazard. Faced withthe global challenge of increasing our food supply by fifty percent in twenty years, the effect of the EU decision will be to further restrict existingtechnologies and inhibit future investments that could actually help increase productivity. Caroline Willetts discusses this and other challengeswe face to ensure food safety and security in the future.

We all know that eating fruit and vegetables form part of a healthy diet, however the science behind these benefits is less well known. Peter vander Toorn and Xingping Zhang discuss this and how Syngenta is breeding new Brussels sprouts and melons with improved taste and healthbenefits. I am sure many of us also enjoy a drink with our meals. Youmight not know that Syngenta is a major supplier of barley to the drinks industryworldwide, ranging from beer to whiskey. Paul Bury discusses howwe breed new barley varieties that have the characteristics needed by brewers.

Finally, I would like to reflect on the theme of the edition – Food and Nutrition – healthy plants, healthy people. The health of the crops thatmake up our diet and the flowers that add to the quality of our lives, are important to us all. Healthy plants are core to our business purposeof “Bringing plant potential to life”. The articles by Mafalda Nina on crop enhancement and Jamie Gibson on growing media are examples ofthe diversity of technologies that we are bringing together to ensure our customers can grow healthy plants for us all to enjoy. This editionillustrates the important contribution Syngenta is making how important technology and knowledge sharing are to ensure a safe, sustainable,food supply for the future, while enabling us to grow more from less.

Sandro AruffoHead of Research & Development

1 United Nations Population Division (March 13, 2007). "The world population continues its path towards population ageing and is on track to surpass 9 billion persons by2050." Press release

Food andNutrition–healthy plants, healthy people

Science Matters Keeping abreast of Syngenta R&D Autumn 2009 03

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A key component of Syngenta’s business is providing solutions to help farmers grow healthy crops that are nutritious for us all to eat.In order to achieve these goals Syngenta must understand the needs and changing demands of consumers and suppliers likesupermarkets, as their influence is increasingly transmitted back down the value chain. From the consumer’s perspective, the food thatfarmers produce should also provide nutritional benefits. Although healthy plants are at the beginning of the value chain rather than theend, and not traditionally part of Syngenta’s business, it is an area which is of vital importance to farmers, and is a subject that Syngentais beginning to have more involvement, linking the science to the market place.

The theme of this edition of Science Matters is “Food and Nutrition; healthy plants,healthy people”. Of course this is a large and complex subject but, alongside the issueof a clean drinking water supply, the theme of the previous edition, it is essential for life.In this article Jonathan Shoham talks about the issues facing the world and howSyngenta plays an essential role in ensuring healthy nutritious food is sustainablyproduced and delivered to people around the world.

Food and Nutrition– linking the science to the marketplace

Science Matters Keeping abreast of Syngenta R&D Autumn 2009

Although everyone assumes cattle eat grass, meat consumption actually drivesgrowth in crops such as corn and soybeans which are used as animal feed

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Food, or more specifically food security,has been headline news for the last twoyears. A recent lead editorial in theFinancial Times in London described theissue as more pressing than globalwarming or global terrorism. The G8countries held their first ever meeting oftheir agricultural ministers in April 2009.The reason was the escalating price offood commodities which led to food riotsin over 30 countries and has resulted inan increase in the number ofmalnourished people from around 800million to almost one billion. This reversesthe long term downward trend in thenumber of malnourished people andundermines the United NationsMillennium Development goal of halvingmalnutrition by 2050. The reason formalnutrition is seldom lack of foodavailability but usually poverty. Poorpeople cannot afford to buy enough food,and this situation is exacerbated as foodprices increase. By increasing cropproductivity Syngenta directly addressesthis problem at both the level of theindividual and society. Higher yields leaddirectly to higher farmer profitability andso, in countries where poor farmers makeup a large proportion of the population,this increases their prosperity andtherefore their ability to secure food. Atthe macro level, by increasing overallproduction, higher yielding seeds andcrop protection products lead to areduction in overall food prices, thusincreasing the affordability for producersand consumers alike.

Of course diet is not only a matter ofquantity, but also quality. The problem isoften in the composition of the diet. Atthe poorest end of the spectrum peoplemight subsist on roots and tubers whichmay not provide adequate nutrition. Aswe move up the economic scale dietschange to cereals, fruit and vegetablesand, ultimately, meat. At the very highestend the problem becomes obesity,although as highlighted by ProfessorMargaret Armar-Klemesu in her “ExternalPerspectives” article, obesity is alsoprevalent in poorer countries as cheapfatty foods become available. As themarket leader in crop protection for fruit

and vegetables and the number threecompany in the seeds market for thesecrops, Syngenta is making a contributionto a healthier diet, by making fruit andvegetables more attractive andaffordable. We are also becomingincreasingly involved in the food chain,ensuring good quality food arrives at yourplate, and an article by Colin Wang in thisedition discusses our role in the foodchain in the Asia Pacific region. As well asfacilitating improved diets through ourinnovation, we need to be very aware oftrends in the changing composition ofdiets because of the impacts they haveon the demand for the crops whichsustain our business. The most obviousexample is increasing meat consumption,which drives growth in crops such ascorn and soybeans which are mainlyused for animal feed. Indeed around 40%of the four main cereals and grains –especially corn, soybeans and wheat –ends up as animal feed so, as a majordriver of crop demand, we need tounderstand this market

A key component of our health is plantnutrition. This is an area which the cropprotection industry has traditionally notplayed a big role, other than in controllingpests and diseases. Artificial fertilizershave been around for over a century andthe technology has not changed much inthat time. R&D spend by fertilizercompanies involved in broad acre cropsis so low that it is not even reported bythem. However, fertilizers are the singlelargest component of farmers’production costs – a fact which washighlighted by the huge price increases in2008 – and contribute every bit as muchto yield as good quality seeds and cropprotection products. Recent scientificadvances are changing our view in howelse we can deliver healthy plants to thegrower and are opening up realopportunities to Syngenta to improveplant health. For example, some of ourcompounds like the Strobilurin fungicides(e.g. Azoxystrobin) and someNeonicotinoid insecticides (e.g.Thiamethoxam) have been shown tohave effects on plant vigor, producinggreener healthier plants. The exciting

science associated with this is discussedin an article by Mafalda Nina later in themagazine. In addition, geneticmodification promises to improve theefficiency with which plants utilizenitrogen. This will have the dual benefitsof reducing the amount and cost ofnitrogen and secondly reducing theenvironmental impact of fertilizer use.

Healthy food and nutrition are essential tolife and Syngenta is playing a large role inensuring that the complex food and feedvalue chain delivers to consumers likeyou and I. There are new scientificbreakthroughs like Pureheart™ melonsand Kumato™ tomatoes that areproviding new healthy options for us tobuy and I am excited that, although theissue of sustainable food supply is hugeand the political challenges great,Syngenta is influencing the debate anddelivering innovations by working withgrowers and suppliers around the worldin helping sustain the supply of healthynutritious food.

Jonathan Shoham, Senior Agricultural Economist

in Syngenta, has held a wide variety of roles spanning

the technical and commercial arenas during his 30

years with the company and its legacy organisations.

He has been involved with projects such as research

targeting, development and launch of soybean

herbicides in Latin America, and the satisfaction of

regulatory requirements for the formation of Syngenta

in 2000. Since then he has focused on Business

Intelligence, a function he established within

Syngenta, looking at market and competitor

developments in the external environment and

ensuring these are reflected in the business strategy.

Jonathan has a PhD in Environmental Economics, a

MBA and a BSc in Chemical Physics.


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06 Science Matters Keeping abreast of Syngenta R&D Autumn 2009

In 2007 the US Corn Yield Contest was won by David K. Hula of Charles City, Virginia,when he achieved 385 bushels per acre, around two and a half times the national averageof 153. Which shows what can be done when conditions are just right in terms of water,nitrogen and sunlight, and while these are clearly the most important, there is another wayto boost food production and that is to energize the plants themselves with crop enhancingagents.

In the 1930s it was observed that plants responded to certain natural chemicals bygrowing more vigorously and under drought conditions. Auxins were discovered tostimulate root growth while cytokins encouraged shoot formation. Synthetic plant growthregulators have been a target for agrochemical research, but discovery and commercialapplication has been slower than in other areas of crop protection due to complexity of thescience involved.

Nevertheless, Syngenta has had its success stories in this area. For example, the fungicideAmistar® (azoxystrobin) increases green leaf area retention and Cruiser® (thiamethoxam),which is a seed treatment, invigorates plants in their early stages of growth. Both increaseyields more than might be expected based solely on their disease or pesticide aspects.Cruiser® is now the world’s top selling insecticide seed treatment, and is promoted for its

‘Vigor Effect’. The Vigor Effect Storybecame the Global Syngenta Awardswinner of 2007. Five years ofindependent laboratory researchconducted by Brazilian universities and10 years of field observations went intoproving that crops treated with Cruiser®

were more vigorous and produceincreased yield. These studies showedthat Cruiser® induces the biosynthesis ofspecific proteins involved in the plant’sstress-defence strategy. This enables it toinvest less energy in overcoming thesestresses and so invest more in growthand crop yield. However, the molecularmechanism underpinning these effectsand their varietal and environmentaldependencies remained unclear.

Crop yields can be boosted by crop enhancing chemicals and Syngenta is at theleading edge of research into them. Mafalda Nina and her colleagues are part of anR&D program which promises products that will increase food production even fromenvironmentally stressed plants.

Persuading plantsto produce more

Cruiser® leads to faster germination and more vigorous growth of the root system

07Science Matters Keeping abreast of Syngenta R&D Autumn 2009

Crop enhancement is an area whereSyngenta is investing via a researchprogram known as EPICC, short forEnhancing the Potential in Crops withChemicals. The project started at the endof 2008 and Mafalda Nina is the projectleader.

Mafalda: “The purpose of EPICC is tobetter understand chemicals with cropenhancement effects, including theirmolecular mechanism, and the way thesedepend on the environment and on cropgenetics. In the long term we seek toimprove our seeds’ germplasm and theoverall objective is to deliver newseed/chemical packages with robust,optimized, and predictable effects. Thescientific strategy at EPICC is to focus onactive ingredients with proven cropenhancement effects such asthiamethoxam.”

The EPICC program has a dedicatedresearch team of Raymonde Fonné-Pfister, Philippe Camblin, Fergus Earley,Lynn Senior, Peter Maienfisch, AndyLeadbeater, Erik Legg, Glenn Bowers,Melanie Klix, Richard Waterman,Deborah Keith as its sponsor andMafalda Nina as its head.

Syngenta already has in its portfolio othercrop enhancer chemicals and plantgrowth regulators (PGRs). Amistar®

(azoxystrobin) has seen incredible salessuccess since its launch in 1997. The lastfive years it has been the biggest sellingfungicide in the world. In addition to thecontrol of a wide range of pathogens,azoxystrobin has an effect on certainplant physiological processes likestomatal conductance resulting inimproved water use efficiency. Stomataare pores on plant leaves that regulatewater vapor and gas exchange –stomatal conductance is a measure ofhow often the stomata are open.

Bion® (acibenzolar-S-methyl) wasdeveloped and tested in the 1990s as afungicide but failed as such. However itacted as a bactericide against plantdiseases for which there was no effectivepreventative. Today it has beenrejuvenated and is used to protect cropssuch as tomatoes, beans, and potatoes.In addition, crops treated with Bion®

show not only increased yields andquality, but an ability to cope withdrought. It also increases theanthocyanidines in grape skins and

improves ornamental flowers by enrichingtheir colour and increasing the number ofblooms.

Another stand-alone crop enhanceralready in the market is Moddus®

(trinexapac-ethyl) which has been usedsuccessfully for many years on Europe’shigh-value wheat crop for control of‘lodging’. Researchers in Germany andelsewhere have demonstrated thatModdus® provides enhanced root massalong with increased water and nutrientefficiency.

So, as you can read, Syngenta has anactive, motivated team researching howchemistries can improve plant health,really exploring how we can “Bring plantpotential to life” by increased vigor, a newway of helping farmers produce healthycrops.

NEMO Project. Pictures of maize seeds treated with

thiamethoxam (125 mg/l) using drench application (A)

and control (B) taken 9 Days After Sowing (DAS).

Thiamethoxam promotes growth of detectable

(>0.5mm in diameter) small roots, by + 20% in a

reproducible and statistically validated experimental

test system.

The NEMO ProjectNEMO is short for neonicotinoidsmodulator and is the first project in theEPICC portfolio. Its aim is to understandthe molecular mechanism of thethiamethoxam vigor effect in maize andsoybean and it will do this by looking atmechanism of action, environmentaldependency, and genetic dependency.NEMO is tackling the research from fivedifferent angles: robust and reproduciblebiological observation in laboratoryconditions; physiological studies ofresponsive plant tissues; geneticcharacterization; and biochemical studiesto reveal the target protein. The datamining will burrow into field data on maizeand soybean in relation to varieties andgeographies. Medium term strategiesinclude searches for specific cropenhancement effects, including water use

efficiency (WUE), nitrogen use efficiency(NUE) and various specific componentsof crop yield.

In addition to the research performed bySyngenta, independent studies arecarried out at the Frei University of Berlinwhere they concentrated on the modelplant Arabidopsis treated withthiamethoxam. Arabidopsis is one of themustard family, commonly used to studyplant genetics. Other strategiccollaborations and partnerships are nowbeing evaluated

The NEMO team comprises glasshousebiology experts based in Stein, analyticalscience experts from Jealott’s Hill,genome biology and plant physiologistsbased at Syngenta Biotechnology Inc,Research Triangle, North Carolina. Alsopart of the team is Peter Maienfisch, theinventor of thiamethoxam, RaymondeFonné-Pfister and Fergus Earley, CPRSyngenta Fellows and Keith Ward, seniorscientist expert in biometrics. MafaldaNina is the project leader.

Mafalda Nina did her first degree in Biochemistry at

the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France

receiving her DEA (Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies)

in molecular biophysics in 1991. She then did a PhD

in molecular biophysics at the Laboratoire de

Simulation Moléculaire, C.E - C.E.A Saclay Gif-sur-

Yvette, France, and graduated in 1994. After

postdoctoral work at the Université de Montreal,

Quebec, at CNRS, and at the Laboratoire de Biologie

et Génômique et Structurales at Illkirch, France, she

joined Novartis Crop Protection in April 2000. At

Syngenta, Mafalda is a computational chemist in

Crop Protection Research Chemistry and in October

2008 she became Head of the Portfolio Strategy

Team for Crop Enhancement (EPICC) at Stein,

Switzerland.

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Brussels sprouts are traditionallydisliked by children and manyadults. That may be changingthanks to Peter van der Toornand his colleagues at Syngenta’sbrassicas research group basedat Enkhuizen, in The Netherlands.

Eat up your

Reaping the health benefits of green vegetables and salads


Syngenta is the leading company forbreeding new Brussels sprouts varietieswith a market share of about 80%. Itstarted a breeding program in the earlynineties to adapt the taste of BrusselsSprouts towards the preferences ofdifferent types of consumers. While olderpeople often prefer the classical bittertaste, young people prefer the mild tastethat has now become the standard forthe market.

But why do brassicas taste as they do?The answer is to be found in theglucosinolates which they contain andthe degradation from these, which are anacquired taste. However, these are anessential part of the plant’s defencesystem against leaf-eating enemies suchas insects, nematodes, slugs andherbivores like pigeons and deer.

Peter: “We have developed new Brusselssprouts varieties with a much better,milder taste. By analyzing the differenttypes and quantities of glucosinolates inBrussels sprouts, and correlating thesewith results from taste panels, we havebeen able to select the preferredbreeding lines.”

What are glucosinolates?

The glucosinolates are a class of organic compounds

that are derived from glucose and an amino-acid.

They all contain nitrogen and sulphur and are

secondary metabolites of almost all brassicas.

Different glucosinolates have different side groups (R

in the picture above) and it is this variation that is

responsible for the different biological properties and

tastes of the brassica crops

So why should we eat Brussels sprouts?The simple answer is that they containingredients which may have healthbenefits in addition to simple nutrition. Inrecent years many clinical studies haveshown the positive effect ofglucosinolates on the prevention of tumordevelopment. The best known exampleis the effects of sulforaphane extractedfrom broccoli in reducing the proliferationof prostate cancers and skin cancer.Subsequent research suggests thatalthough some specific glucosinolatesmay individually have a stronger effect,the best preventive action was obtainedwhen naturally occurring mixes ofglucosinolates as present in differentbrassicas was consumed. Thevegetables could be steamed or par-

boiled so they don’t lose the healthbenefits.

And it’s not only Brussels sprouts that aregood for us. Salad leaves are alsobeneficial. Rocket (also know as rucola)is one of the few brassicas eaten raw. Itssulforaphane content is high and its tasteis appealing. Syngenta has acquired arocket breeding program from theDaehnfeldt seed company and isinvesting in research into this crop. Thebasis of the program is the introductionof a hybrid breeding system that makes itpossible to combine several traits, suchas glucosinolate contents and shelf life inone variety.

Sulforaphane

Syngenta also has breeding programs inother types of salad leaves, including thewell known lettuce types Iceberg,Butterhead and Romaine. Yet anothertype of green vegetable that is eaten rawin salads is spinach. In these crops otherhealth promoting nutrients can be found,such as choline, folic acid, and vitamin E.Links have been shown between thesenutrients and learning skills in humanbeings. Salad mixes comprising rocket,spinach, lettuce and other greenvegetables are therefore extremelyhealthy.

Peter: “The value that Syngenta brings tothe consumer is based on a co-operationof plant breeders and scientists. We arebased at Enkhuizen, but we collaboratewith other groups at Pune, India, andBeijing, China, as well as the analytical labat Jealott’s Hill International ResearchCentre in the UK, the marker lab inToulouse, France, and third parties. Thegenetics of these traits is complex; amultitude of different genes is involved.The projects are run with project teamsacross the different scientific disciplines.In recent years vegetable plant breedinghas become a multi disciplinary activity.For green vegetables many opportunitiesexist for Syngenta to bring their potentialto life, and we are prepared to realize thispotential”

Syngenta research into glucosinolatein brassicas. Syngenta has madesignificant efforts to analyse glucosinolatetypes and quantities in relation to healthand taste. Based on the available know-how regarding the health benefits ofspecific types, analytical and taste panel

studies, the aim is to balance theglucosinolates so as to obtain maximumtaste and health with improvedproductivity. Other compounds alsostrongly influence the taste perceptionand can mask the taste of healthycompounds.

As an example, the graph shows aprincipal component analysis of tasteperception and analytical measurementsin White Cabbage. Imagine vectors fromthe origin (centre of the plot) to eachsensory attribute or compound. Thesmaller the angle at the origin betweenthe two vectors, the higher thecorrelation. Vectors at 90° areuncorrelated; vectors that point inopposite directions are negativelycorrelated. Glucoraphanin (that istransformed by the enzyme myrosinaseinto sulforaphane upon damage to theplant) is closely correlated with the“mouth drying” eating experience andbitter taste.

Peter van der Toorn was awarded his MSc in

phytopathology at the Free University in Amsterdam

in 1982 and then went to work for Nunhems Seeds

as a seed physiologist. During his years with the

company he did a PhD at the University of

Wageningen on embryo development in seed

ripening and subsequent post-harvest treatments of

celery. Subsequently he did postdoctoral research in

Guelph, Canada, and Wageningen, The Netherlands.

In 1990 he moved to Zaadunie in Enkhuizen which

eventually became part of Syngenta where he is now

head of the R&D Leafy Vegetables section,

overseeing breeding projects across the world.

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is high on the menu in China

Colin sums up food safety ratherdramatically: “It’s an issue which keepsevery food manufacturer awake at night.”He is right to do so because it is nowbeing given top priority by the Chineseauthorities. This is perhaps not surprisingand the problem was highlighted in 2008by the scandal of baby milk powderadulterated with melamine. More than300,000 babies were affected and 6,000become seriously ill, of whom 150 hadsuffered kidney failure, and six died.Melamine raised the apparent proteincontent of the milk by increasing thenitrogen analysis figure.

Food is the most vital part of life and itshould nourish us, not harm us. Foodsafety has to be a joint effort whichinvolves manufacturers, retailers andgovernment. But who should allocateresponsibility and who should bear thecost? It cannot all be loaded on to theshoulders of the farmers at the bottom of

the food chain because many will notsurvive the burden it imposes.

The problem of ensuring a food supplythat is free from unwanted contaminantsis immense in China where there are 750million farmers and where most foodproducers are small companies. China isa net exporter of food, so care has to betaken to ensure this meets internationalstandards. As Premier Wen Jiabaorecently said: “The Chinese Governmentattaches great importance to food safetybecause it is not only in the interest of theChinese people but also people in theworld.”

So what are the main threats to foodsafety? Some come from people alongthe food chain who are inefficient, or whouse outdated products, or who simply tryto cheat the consumer by sellingsubstandard food and infringing trademarks. There are also other threats, such

as pesticide residues, heavy metal traces,disease pathogens and chemicals usedby the food producers. For example, theantibiotic chloramphenicol cancontaminate honey and malachite greendye has been found in seafood. This lastagent is used to protect fish eggs againsta dangerous fungus.

Manyproducts are available to theChinesegrower

A misinformed public can create equallydifficult problems for food producers,witness the way in which a newspaperitem about panama disease in bananasresulted in a false belief that bananas


Embarrassed by food scandals, the Chinese Government has passed new food safetylaws. Colin Wang, Manager of Stewardship & Sustainable Agriculture at Syngenta(China), explains why they were needed and what are their implications.

cause cancer. The demand for the fruitfell to zero and growers, brokers, packersand transport workers were facingunemployment. The scare was tracedback to a newspaper headline whichdescribed the disease as ‘bananacancer’. The episode was only brought toan end by a media blitz of correctinformation put out by the Government.There has been vigorous action toimprove food safety at all levels backedup by publicity campaigns. New laws (16of those) and regulations (25 of those),subsidies to food producers, bettermanagement along the food chain,standardization of food production, morecontrol over brand names and advertisingclaims, and a host of other measures aredesigned to ensure that food producedin China is as healthy as anywhere in theworld. More money is also being devotedto research.

The tenth five-year plan (2001 – 2005)achieved some results. Whilst manymodern pesticides have a valuable role toplay to China, use of the most toxicpesticides has been reduced (from 21%to 12%) and labelling of authorisedproducts has become much better. Thishas led to a reduction in insecticidesproduced, while herbicide production hasincreased. More than 97% of vegetables,fruit and tea met the new Governmentstandards. The eleventh five-year plan(2006 – 2010) is pushing these limits andsuccesses even further.

So what are the challenges to food safety?Colin: “The leading agrochemicalsuppliers have always been the primetargets to be checked and supervisedbut their products are generally morereliable in quality and consistency. In factthe biggest challenge is the huge numberof small scale, poorly educated farmerswith only primitive knowledge of howpesticides and veterinary medicinesshould be used. Low prices, badmanagement, poor quality food andmisguided attempts to prevent animalepidemics all conspire to put food at risk.On top of which there are some seriousenvironmental issues of polluted irrigationwater increasing the heavy-metal burdenof the soils.

“There are two types of restrictionsaffecting food production in China:restrictions due to old-fashioned attitudeto agriculture, trading, and consumption,and restrictions due to there being notenough high level researchers, supervisors,inspectors, and risk assessors, plus ashortage of skilled workers.”

Improving food safety is not going to becheap and there are challenges ahead.Manufacturers will have to balancecompliance with the law with cost.Prevention and testing at themanufacturing level can be prohibitiveand yet there will have to be stricterquality control of all materials andproducts. Automation of food processingcan reduce costs eventually but it is costlyto install and is not really competitive inthe Chinese situation as yet.

“The Chinese governmentattaches great importanceto food safety because itis not only in the interestof the Chinese but alsopeople in the world.”— Premier Wen Jiabao, China

TheThousandMileJourneytoSaferFoodCompared to other parts of the world,where food safety is the responsibility ofone or two government departments, thesituation in China is rather more complex.There are several organizations involvedand these are:•The Ministry of Health, which deals withprocessed food.•The State Food and Drug Administrationwhich coordinates and evaluates.•The Ministry of Agriculture sets the foodstandards.•The Ministry of Commerce supervisesfood trading.•The General Administration of QualitySupervision, Inspection and Quarantineensures food quality control.•The State Administration of Industryand Commerce is responsible for marketoutlets management and inspection.

Research into food is the responsibility oftwo bodies:•The Ministry of Science and Technologywhich finances and directs researchprojects.•The National Institute of Nutrition andFood Safety which looks after foodsafety and nutrition research.

There has been a great deal ofimprovement at all levels, but farms arethe weakest point in the Chinese foodchain. Food safety requires an integratedapproach to quality managementcombining the right attitudes to safetywith joint responsibility. The system willnever be perfect but continualimprovement is the name of the game.

Along with the Ministry of Agriculture,which is concentrating on trainingfarmers, Syngenta is playing its part bycollaborating with the Agriculture Qualityand Safety Center to scale up thetraining. Colin envisages a refrigeratedsystem of distribution and food handlingwith technical support for farmers andfood manufacturers, and with muchharsher penalties for those who infringethe safety regulations.

The challenges of the Crop Protectionmarket in China include:-•There are about 750 million farmers and250 million households with a small areaof land (0.2-0.45 Ha/household) undercultivation.•There are about 450,000 chemical retailers•There are more than 3,100 domesticCrop Protection Chemical factories•The Crop Protection Market is chaoticwith substandard products and a bigproblem of counterfeit goods.

Colin Wang graduated from the China Agriculture

University and has an MSc in horticulture, following

which he worked for 10 years in agriculture and food

processing at the vegetables products suppliers to

KFC and McDonald’s. In 2008 he worked as the

supply chain manager in Husi Produce which

supplies McDonald’s China. It was also part of Colin’s

remit to see that the contestants in the Olympics

were supplied with top quality vegetables – as indeed

they were. He joined Syngenta in April 2009 and is

now manager of the Stewardship & Sustainable

Agriculture division. He deals with various projects

including medical stewardship, food safety training,

sustainable agriculture and food value chain.


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12

What a wonderful fruit the

has become

Rocky Ford, Colorado, is a small town famous for its watermelons and from where itexports seeds to many parts of the USA and the world. What may eclipse their fame,however, are the watermelons of Syngenta Seeds Inc, which is based at Woodland,California, and where a team of specialists in this fruit are now coming up with someremarkable varieties. This team is one of the six Syngenta watermelon breeding groupsled by Xingping Zhang.

Watermelon is a key fruit crop with 3.7 million hectares devoted to it around the worldand it is grown in more than 100 countries of which China has the largest production with2.3 million hectares. Watermelon is a short season crop, taking about three months fromsowing to harvesting, it brings a good cash return for growers and demand is increasing.There are compounds in watermelon which could bring added health benefits. This fruit

contains higher levels of the carotenoidlycopene than any other fresh fruit orvegetable, and it can be a valuable partof a healthy diet. Lycopene is thepigment which gives watermelon fleshits red color just as it does in tomatoes.Carotenoid compounds are fat-solublemolecules which give various plantstheir characteristic hues, ranging fromyellow to deep red.

Syngenta is dishing up healthier versions of this ever popular fruit thanks to the workof Xingping Zhang and his colleagues who have boosted its flavour and nutrientcontent.


Carotenoids act as antioxidants whoseprimary role is to neutralize dangerouslyreactive compounds that are createdduring photosynthesis such as hydrogenperoxide and singlet oxygen, both ofwhich can attack and destroy cellmembranes. Singlet oxygen is oxygenwith a higher energy charge because itsouter electrons spin in oppositedirections. There is some evidence thatantioxidants can protect humans againstcancer although the proof that they reallydo so is disputed.

Xingping Zhang in a Watermelon Breeding

Station in Hungary

Watermelon is also a rich source ofcitrulline, which is an amino acid that canbe metabolized to arginine, an essentialamino acid for humans. Arginine plays arole in cardiovascular and immunefunctions as a source of nitric oxide whichregulates blood pressure.

Cultivated watermelons can weighanything from 1 kg to 30 kg. They can bedifferent shapes with varying skin andflesh colours and their sugar content canbe as high as 14%, or as low as 3%. Thepopular names of cultivated heirloomwatermelon varieties, of which more than40 have been developed in the US, canbe amusing, such as Family Fun, DixieQueen, Prince Charles and Sugar-Baby.Despite this, they have a very narrowgenetic base as revealed by molecularmarkers.

Xingping: “At Syngenta watermelon R&Dwe have been making big efforts tobroaden watermelon’s genetic base andbring new traits to elite watermelongermplasm. The major traits for growersand sellers are yield, uniformity,appearance and shelf-life. For consumers

it is sweetness, flavour and conveniencewhich are important. Syngenta can nowdeliver a watermelon which has all thesesought-after traits. The research teamhas actively explored and bred highcarotenoid and lycopene geneticvariation into elite watermelon lines andcommercialized these as the high-lycopene watermelon which is marketedunder the Ruby Bliss™ label by Dulcinea®

Farms.”

Xingping has his name on eight USpatents, of which three are for seedlesswatermelons. This is an area in which heis something of a world expert. Back in1991 he developed a seeded hybridvariety, called Xi Nong 8, whichrevolutionized watermelon varieties inChina. It has been grown there since1996 and on more than 400,000hectares annually. He also discoveredand introduced the use of dinitro-herbicides to induce tetraploids (i.e. cellswith four sets of chromosomes) inwatermelons in 1994 while working inClemson University.

Syngenta research into watermelonsSyngenta scientists have sought tobroaden the genetic base of thewatermelon and are actively searchingthe native trait variation within thewatermelon genetic pool. The wildwatermelon is Citrullus lanatus var.citroides, and its related species isCitrullus colocynthis, which are importantsources of native traits which can beused to introduce genetic variationsaimed at improving cultivatedwatermelons.

Research is currently focussed on thetraits that have most impact. Forexample, a genetic variation with morethan 100µg/100g of lycopene (asopposed to the normal range of 35–50)has been discovered and had been bredinto elite seedless watermelon usingconventional plant breeding methods. Asshown in the graph, the new seedlesswatermelons RWT8173 and 8174 havesignificantly higher lycopene and totalcarotenoids compared with the standardcommercial varieties Shadow and Tri-X313. More research is being conductedto learn the genetics and manipulation ofthe traits, the aim being to transfer thehealth benefit traits into different geneticbackgrounds and genetic combinations.

Many tetraploid watermelon lines arebeing routinely generated in Syngentawatermelon breeding programs using themethod developed by Xingping. It not

only improves the efficiency of tetraploidinduction but also ensures the safety ofthose doing tetraploid induction whichusually involves using colchicine, a verytoxic chemical. Dinitro-herbicides likeoryzalin are much safer.

Comparison of total lycopene and carotenoid

content (g/100g) of new and standard seedless

watermelon varieties

Syngenta is collaborating with theNational Engineering Research Center forVegetables, Beijing Genome Institute andthe Institute of Vegetables and Flowers ofChinese Academy of AgriculturalSciences to sequence the whole genomeof watermelon. The genome sequencedata will allow Syngenta scientist todiscover, characterize and manipulate awide range of superior traits for futurewatermelons.

In the last five years, the Syngentawatermelon team has taken out sevenUS patents devoted to watermelongenetic materials with enhanced qualitytraits and technology that enhance theseedless variety. US patents for a smaller,more convenient form of this type of fruitwere taken out in 2004, 2007 and earlierthis year.

Xingping Zhang did a BSc in agricultural and

horticultural sciences at Gansu Agricultural University,

Lanzhou, China, in 1983 and then went to the North-

western Agricultural University to do an MSc,

becoming a lecturer there. In1993 he moved to the

US to do a PhD at Clemson University, South

Carolina, following which he stayed on to do

postdoctoral research, after which he went to work of

Hollar Seeds in Rocky Ford, Colorado. He joined

Syngenta as a plant scientist in 1999, and was

promoted to Syngenta SciTech Fellow in 2008. He is

now with Syngenta Seeds Inc. at Woodland,

California, where he is Head of the Global

Watermelon R&D.sm

14

Vegetable gardening has become a reinvigorated hobby in the United States since 2006, with a 22% increase in spending and a 39%increase in the number of people engaging in this healthy activity. The economic downturn is partly responsible, but the publicity givento Mrs Obama’s White House garden has also encouraged the trend. In fact, grow-your-own produce has become a globalphenomenon and in the UK, for example, the sales of vegetable seeds outpace those of flower seeds for the first time since 1945.

Syngenta is now part of this growth industry in the United States, thanks to its 2006 acquisition of Conrad Fafard® Inc. This 88-year-old company is a leading manufacturer of peat-based growing media, well-known among professional ornamental growers throughoutNorth America and gaining popularity among retail outlets. Fafard®, headquartered in Agawam, Massachusetts., operates peat bogsin the United States (Minnesota) and Canada (New Brunswick and Manitoba) as well as US production facilities in South Carolina,Florida, Texas and Minnesota, and Canadian plants in New Brunswick and Manitoba, which opened March 2009. Fafard® ships itsproducts to international growers in more than 20 countries. Media quality-control tests and physical and chemical properties are thekeys to Fafard’s success. During the entire production process, mixes undergo 22 individual tests, including quality assurance, physicalproperties and analytical tests. Once blended, the mixes are tested for attributes such as bulk density, water retention and porosity.Both EC (Electrical Conductivity – the measure of all dissolved salts in a growing medium solution) – and pH tests are performedcontinuously throughout the process, and every sample is catalogued and stored.

Jamie: “High-quality transplants are crucial to gardening success. They must withstand disease and insect pressure, rapid weatherchanges in spring and endure minimal maintenance in garden centers. Growers must produce a transplant that provides long-term post-


Helping growers with their potting mixes, providing technical assistance anddeveloping problem-solving tools are what the Syngenta Lawn and Gardencompany, Conrad Fafard®, is all about, as Jamie Gibson explains.

Syngenta goes back to its

ggaarrddeenniinngg roots

15

harvest performance in retailenvironments, on farms and for homegardens, and Fafard’s Research andDevelopment team has been at theforefront of meeting this challenge.”

Fafard® manufactures soilless growingmedia for plug producers, finishedtransplant growers and also providessoils to amend low organic mattergardens. Several Florida- and Texas-based growers that produce theseasonal transplants for large-scalevegetable farms use Fafard® growingmedia. The company also supplies thelargest vegetable transplant producer inthe United States and the one that isresponsible for the majority of vegetable

transplants purchased for home gardens.Its R&D conducted media trials with thisparticular company on site to improvevegetable transplant performance.

The science behind the Fafard® brandThe Fafard® Research Leader Program,which began in 2008, brings togetheracademic and practical research to helpgrowers achieve healthier and moreprofitable plants. The program testsadvanced potting-media formulationsand analyzes how different raw materials,soil amendments and additives performin varying greenhouse settings. Bycombining institutional knowledge withhands-on research, the programcontinues to gather information todevelop new products and improvecurrent mixes.

Kathy Crowley, a 2008 Fafard Research Leader,conducted growing media trials with severalvegetable transplant species.

Propagation trials involved biologicalamendments such as Trichoderma,Streptomyces and Bacillus. Thesebeneficial microbes were incorporatedinto the seeding mix, and plants wereevaluated on their root and shootperformance, nutrient content and visualappearance. Results showed that thesebeneficial microbes improved the tone oftomato and cabbage seedlings.

A fresh blend of wood chips and peatwas trialed with finished transplants andresearchers discovered that theproprietary mix is comparable tostandard production mixes. Thisinnovative approach will reduce the costof goods, extend the harvested supply ofpeat moss and create a sustainablemedium.

Landscape trials with soil amendmentsfor improved yield and vegetableperformance have also been initiated.Researchers are comparing several typesof Fafard® planting mixes . Squash, bean,tomato, eggplant and pepper yields willbe measured every week to capture plantperformance.

Biological additives improve plant health;beneficial or biological microbes are fungi

and bacteria that are impregnated onbran or clay or blended with iron(magnetite ore) and humic acid. Materialsare not active until temperatures areabove 50oFahrenheit (10oC). Sporesgerminate when in contact with rootexudates and colonization of the rootsystem soon follows. Biologicals can beincorporated into the media for seed,cutting and finished plant production.

Jamie: “In spring 2009, we conductedpropagation and production trials withorganic media. Standards set by theNational Organic Program for organicmedia allows them to contain peat, bark,perlite and vermiculite, but not a syntheticwetting agent or a soluble fertilizercomprised of inorganic salts. At Fafard®,we added worm castings or“vermicompost” (a blend of worm humus,bedding materials and decomposedvegetable and food waste) to seeding mixand this proved to enhance growth andfoliar tone of tomato seedlings. Futuretrials with organic media will factorvarious organic liquid fertilizers andmeasure the synergy between soil andnutrients.

Alternative media trends involve addingchipped pine or fresh loblolly pine grindsto a certain percentage of peat to providea growing medium with exceptionalwater-holding properties and porosity.Crops grow successfully in the mediumdue to the pre-plant fertilizer charge thateliminates nitrogen tie-up. Rice hulls arealso being incorporated into the growingmedium as a source of porous aggregateto replace higher-priced perlite.

James (Jamie) Gibson received his BSc degree in

plant and soil sciences in 1996 from West Virginia

University, Morgantown. He later earned MSc and

PhD degrees in 2000 and 2003, respectively, from

North Carolina State University, Raleigh. After

graduate school, he worked as an assistant

professor at the West Florida Research and

Education Center of the University of Florida, where

he both taught and did research. In 2007, Jamie

joined Fafard® as corporate manager of Quality

Control, based at its testing facility in Anderson,

South Carolina. Currently, Jamie is Fafard’s R&D

Director.


sm


Around 4,000 years ago the Assyrians discovered that barley could be malted and thenfermented to produce an alcoholic beverage. The ancient Egyptians improved the processto something like the malting of today. Barley production now exceeds 135 million tonnesa year worldwide and in some countries, like the UK, it is the second largest arable crop.Not all malted barley ends up in alcoholic drinks. Some goes into bedtime drinks, someinto sweets such as Maltesers, while raw (pearl) barley is added to soups and stews.

Paul: “Barley’s long history and tradition is one of the factors we need to bear in mindwhen developing new varieties for malting. Many smaller premium brands still like to useold varieties. However, the larger market depends on new high performance ones.”

Syngenta’s barley breeding operations are centred in UK at Market Stainton in Lincolnshirewhere a small dedicated team carry out breeding, trialling and seed production and liasewith other breeding locations in France and Germany .

Syngenta is at the forefront of research into barley and its new Quench barley won theprestigious National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) Cereals Cup in 2009. Quenchis seen as a significant step forward as a spring barley, offering growers higher yields anda wider range of marketing options including export potential. It has yields equal to thehighest yielding feed varieties and is ideal for brewing. Moreover it has good resistance tobrackling (buckling of the stem), mildew and Rhynchosporium (barley scald).

The barley team with their winning NIAB cup

Quench is enjoying considerable successacross Europe and is being tested inAustralia, New Zealand, Kenya andChina.

Head of barley breeding is Paul Bury who explains how Syngenta’s new varieties areplaying an ever-increasing role in this key global cereal crop, which provides much ofthe drink with which we celebrate.

a crop to celebrate, and to celebrate with


The science behind malting and thefermenting of barleyBrewing may be an art as old ascivilization but now science plays a keyrole. Barley is an excellent model crop forgenetic research. It is a diploid with arelatively small genome and much of thegenetics is well understood. Access tothe latest genomic technology is part ofSyngenta’s approach, the aim being toselect for desired characteristics withmolecular markers using the markerplatform at St Sauveur in France.

Malting is the process by which thestarchy endosperm of a barley grain isconverted to fermentable sugars whichcan then produce alcohol. Maltinginvolves three distinct phases, the first isgermination and this takes two days.Water is added to dry mature barley tostart the process, during which the barleyembryo produces giberellic acid, a planthormone, and this in turn signals theproduction of amylase, protease andglucanase enzymes.

The second stage is called modificationand takes four days, during which thebarley starts to grow. Temperature,aeration and water supply need to becarefully controlled, and the skill andexperience of the master maltster is allimportant. The enzymes produced by thebarley grain start to break downendosperm cell walls and convert thestarch granules into fermentable sugars.

The third stage is the kilning and takesone day. Here the malting process isstopped by drying the malted barley,rapidly reducing its moisture content from45% to 4%.

For either brewing or distilling, maltedbarley is ground to give a coarse flour andthen the sugars are extracted into warmwater, yeast is added to beginfermentation. This so-called wort solutionis left for between three days to twoweeks. Ale fermentation is usually shortand at moderate (room) temperature, buttraditional lager fermentation takes longerat lower temperatures.

The balance of these qualitycharacteristics is a very important factorto be considered when breeding newvarieties of barley. Brewers or distillersusually define specific parameters theywant in the malt they receive, regardingenzymes, protein, betaglucan and maltextract. Most processors have differentspecifications depending on the productthey make.

To measure malt extract and alcohol yieldin the Syngenta breeding programmes,over 2,000 small scale malting tests arecarried out. This micro-malting is thesame as the full industrial process butprocessing 100 grams rather than 200tonnes, although following the samecontrolled processes as a commercialmaltster. This is a two week process fromstart of malting to end of analysis whenthe sugars are extracted from groundmalt and dissolved in hot water. Goodenzyme levels and soluble protein levelsare also important for fermentation andare measured at this stage.

Small scale brewing – testing the mash

Fast processing characteristics have alsoto be assessed during the micromaltingtests, such as the speed of filtrationwhich is dependent on the viscosity ofthe wort and betaglucan levels, both ofwhich can cause the solution to flow tooslowly through a brewery.

When breeding a new variety for maltingthe priorities are high yield, high maltextract, high alcohol yield and fastprocessing. High malt extract andalcohol/spirit yield is all important forbrewers and distillers. One tonne ofbarley produces around 13,000 pints ofbeer, or 600 bottles of whisky, so smallimprovements in alcohol yield producemany extra bottles of product.

Paul: “The demands made on barley arecomplex but they boil down to a fewbasic principles: cost of raw ingredient; aconsistent product that can meetdifferent market specifications; and abarley that goes through their industrialplants quickly and without unforeseenproblems. High yield has to be the firstpriority for breeding quality barley. Iffarmers won’t grow it, then a new varietywill soon become an old variety. The maltindustries generally do not want to payhigh premiums, and so they will look forvarieties which the farmer will grow, ratherthan ones with the absolute best qualityparameters.”

Syngenta teams breed for and selecthigh yielding lines in trials, for which theyuse the latest techniques such asproprietary statistical systems foranalysing field data. Together withgenomic information, these allow geneticselection for performance characteristics. Paul: “A lot of our time is spent talking tomaltsters, brewers and distillers all overthe world. Increasingly, the largeprocessors are becoming more global,and our advantage as ‘Global Syngenta’is that we can offer technical andcommercial contact over a wide area.Two of the recent Syngenta Awardsfinalists demonstrate this. The “Cropprotection and Seeds working together inScotland” story and we also had the“Great Beer story” which involvesSyngenta barley, bred in UK, grown inGermany, and used for premium beer inJapan. Tom Mitchell in Scotland andHiroyuki Hasebe in Japan were key tothese initiatives.

“Because of the complex nature ofmalting, brewing and distilling, and thewide range of countries we operate in,Syngenta’s barley breeding relies onclose co-operation and hard work of ateam of people including breeding staff,lab technicians, field operators, productdevelopers, and seed producers. Allparts need to function together if we areto end up with a good product, and thisteam really does typify the way Syngentapeople can work together.”

Paul Bury graduated from Nottingham university in

1985 with a degree in agricultural science. He then

went to work for New Farm Crops as a trainee barley

breeder. New Farm crops became part of Ciba

seeds, then Novartis and finally Syngenta. His

position in the company is barley breeder, responsible

for all programs and activities worldwide.

sm

18

European consumers worry aboutfood safety and the media oftenmention pesticides as a cause forconcern. Syngenta invests $120million annually on assessing thesafety of its products. It isCaroline Willetts’ job to explainthese safety assessments tothose in the food industry.

Is it

19

The use of chemicals to protect cropsand keep homes free from infestation istraceable back to the Ancient Egyptians.The first legislation on pesticidesappeared in the 1900s and coveredarsenic levels in food (a natural pesticideused at the time). Pesticide registrationwas initially based on benefit / efficacydata. Then as synthetic pesticide useincreased, it became apparent that thenewer chemicals needed to be used withcare and more safeguards were put inplace. Nowadays, pesticide registrationrequires demonstration of safety to theoperator and bystanders, to all aspectsof the environment (including non-targetlife forms), to the food it is protecting, andto the person who eats it.

Caroline: “The presence of pesticideresidues in the diet must not have anadverse effect on human health. Withinthe European Union (EU), dietary safetycovers residues in food while in the USApotential pesticide residues in drinkingwater are also included.”

Over time, safety assessments havebecome increasingly complex, and themodels and data used continue toevolve. Pesticide regulations also changeas new areas of concern arise, e.g.endocrine disruption. Caroline: “AtSyngenta we use risk assessment toshow us whether pesticide levels areacceptable. Risk is what can happenwhen hazard and exposure overlap. Forexample, fire is a hazard, the distancefrom it is the exposure, and the closeryou get to the fire, the greater your risk isof being burned. If a hazard is small, butexposure is large, the risk may be thesame as if the hazard is large, but theexposure is small. To estimate risk youneed to be able to measure both hazardand exposure.”

Assessing the risk of a pesticide Scientists at Syngenta ensure thatproducts meet safety requirements usinga variety of disciplines.

Radio-labelled pesticide, with labels indifferent parts of the molecule is used todetermine what it breaks down to.Having identified the residues of interest,analytical methods are developed tomeasure these residues down to as lowas 10 parts per billion (0.01mg/kg).Residue field trials are carried out to findout what the crop residue levels will be atharvest. These field trials are run at thecritical Good Agricultural Practice (cGAP)level. These are the worse-caseconditions with the highest legal

application rate, highest number ofapplications and shortest time betweenfinal spray and harvest. The result is thehighest residue possible for this use.Trials are performed on every crop orcrop group that the pesticide is to beused on and they have to cover at leastone growing season, represent a rangeof climates and soil types, and cover bothfield and covered crops, if relevant.

Safe use of pesticides is critical

Field trials residues are used to setMaximum Residue Levels (MRLs), whichare known as ‘tolerances’ in the USA.MRLs are used as legal trading standardsand indicate whether growers are usingpesticides according to the label. MRLsare set for every pesticide for every cropon the label. Currently the EU and USAuse different calculation methods. Whenthese are combined with possibledifferent cGAPs (resulting from differentpests / pest pressures) it can result indifferent MRLs leading to potential tradingissues. A cross industry project isunderway that will try to resolve this MRLharmonisation issue.

There are two aspects of riskassessment: hazard and exposure.

For a pesticide, hazard is assessed usingtoxicity studies. Syngenta performs awide range of studies, using severalanimal species, looking at both short andlong term exposure. For each study thedose that does not cause any harm iscalculated and this is known as theNOAEL, short for No-Observed-Adverse-Effect-Level. The most sensitive studiesfor the most sensitive species areidentified and used to establish short-term and long-term safety doses. TheNOAEL from these studies are divided bya safety factor of 100. This represents afactor of 10, to take into account thedifferences in response betweenindividuals, and another factor of 10 toallow for the difference between species.The short-term safe dose is known as theARfD or Acute Reference Dose, and thelong term safe dose, is called the ADI orAcceptable Daily Intake, (or in the USA,CRFD, Chronic Reference Dose).

Exposure occurs if a pesticide isconsumed in food. To estimate this, weneed to know the residue in the food, andthe quantity of food eaten. Foodconsumption varies from country tocountry and by sub-groups such astoddlers, the elderly and vegetarians etc.Models are available for national andglobal populations, including thesevarious sub-groups.

It is also necessary to look at whathappens to residues during cooking orcommercial processing. There might alsohave been the transfer of a pesticide tomeat, milk or eggs as a result of animalseating treated feed. If this happens,MRLs are calculated for meat etc. andused in the exposure calculations.

The risk assessment then compares theamount of residue in the diet (exposure)to the safety dose (hazard). If exposure isless than the hazard for all sub-groupsthen the risk from use is acceptable.

“But is it safe?” is the question thatmembers of the public will ask. How doyou answer this for someone who maybe seeking an assurance of absolutesafety. Caroline: “We’d like to say is thatthe food is safe but scientifically wecannot use ‘safe’ in this context.”

So how do you answer such a leadingquestion? “It’s as risk-free as we canpossibly make it and far safer than riskssuch as natural toxins and food poisoningmicrobes” may be the best answer to give.

Caroline Willetts did a degree in Biological Sciences

at the University of Reading specialising in

microbiology. Her first job was working for the UK’s

National Health Service (NHS) at St Mary’s Hospital,

Paddington, raising monoclonal antibodies to

Gardnerella vaginalis (in the same labs where Fleming

discovered penicillin, where she says she

rediscovered penicillin there quite a few times herself).

She joined Syngenta in 1987, as part of the analytical

chemistry group in Environmental Sciences, at

Jealott’s Hill International Research Centre,

developing immunoassays to pesticides. She’s still

located there but is responsible for Food Chain

Liaison for the Human Safety group.


sm


For an external perspective on nutrition Professor Margaret Armar-Klemesu givesa view from Ghana. She discusses the burden of a rising population on malnutritionand how access to cheap street food has led to some surprising health issues.


Globally, more than 850 million people arechronically undernourished and unable toobtain sufficient food to meet theirminimum requirements for energy andother nutrients. Of this number, theoverwhelming majority are in developingcountries, which account for over 90% ofthe undernourished. Whilst still battlingthe problem of persistent food insecurityand under-nutrition, many developingcountries are now faced with the problemof rising rates of overweight and obesityand their associated diet-relateddiseases. This emerging trend of co-existing under-nutrition and over-nutritionhas been linked to increasingurbanization, especially in the developingcountries, where almost all the predictedpopulation growth in the next 30 years isexpected to occur in urban areas, fromthe current three billion to nearly fivebillion.

Rapid urban growth poses a threat tolivelihoods due to lack of employmentopportunities with the number of peopleseeking jobs far outstripping the labourmarket. This trend is very worrying as it islikely to exacerbate poverty, foodinsecurity and under-nutrition in big cities.Contrary to earlier perception that obesityin the developing world is essentiallyassociated with affluence, a currentreview of studies on the subject suggeststhat this is no longer the case and thatthe burden of obesity in a particularcountry tends to shift towards groups oflower socio-economic status in moreeconomically developed settings as

pertains in urban areas (Monteiro et al.2004). Not only is this trend of greatconcern, the increasing co-existence ofunderweight and obesity in the samefamily is a major public health challengeto developing countries who can ill affordthe economic implications to their healthsystems. Referred to as the “dualburden” or “nutrition paradox” thisrelatively new phenomenon is beingobserved in countries as diverse asChina, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt, SouthAfrica, among others (Doak et al. 2005;Caballero 2005). Writing on the subject,Caballero shares his observation ofoverweight mothers with theirundernourished children in the waitingroom of a primary care clinic in the slumsof Sao Paulo in Brazil. Similarobservations were made in Accra(Ghana) by researchers who noted anapparently high prevalence of obesewomen and undernourished children inthe same households, particularly in thepredominantly indigenous or the GaMashie area of the city (Ga Mashie StudyTeam 1996). The phenomenon, asobserved in Accra was aptly labeled as“overweight mother-stunted child”(Maxwell et al. 2000). Stunting (i.e. lowweight for age) is a measure of poor lineargrowth and reflects chronic childhoodunder-nutrition.

The so-called “dual burden” has beenlinked to several features of the urbanenvironment. These include the moresedentary lifestyles and shifts in diettowards increased consumption of cheap

high calorie convenience foods (includingthose from street vendors and fast foodrestaurants) not only because they arereadily available but because they may bethe best option for women working awayfrom home and with less time to preparehealthy meals for the family. Urbanresidents are heavily dependent on theurban market and because in developingcountries, a larger share of the householdbudget is spent on food, prices andincomes ultimately determinehouseholds’ access to, choice andselection of foods. Affluent urbanconsumers are more likely to afford andmay have greater access to a widervariety of foods, possibly of better qualityand from diverse sources. The urbanpoor on the other hand are particularlyvulnerable due to limited income and thecheap, calorie-dense and nutrient-pooroptions may be their only alternative. Intrying to explain the occurrence of thedual-burden among the urban poor,Caballero (2005) has postulated thatthough nutrient density is important forgrowing children, cheap calorie-dense,nutrient-poor foods may actuallyadversely affect young children’s growthwhilst providing sufficient calories for theadult to gain excessive weight. Whilst thisexplanation is plausible it is worth lookingat the wider picture of the urbanenvironment as pertains in developingcountries and the work of Maxwell et al.(2000) in Accra presents the indigenouspeople of Accra, the Ga, as an interestingcase study of the overweight mother-stunted child syndrome.

Street foods and the dual burden of

malnutritionin developing countries: Is there a link?


Overall, the Accra study showed thathouseholds in the lowest income bracketspent the bulk (as much as 70%) of theirincome on food and reliance on streetfood was identified as one of thestrategies for cutting food expenditures.The divisibility of street food allows theconsumption of smaller portions ofprepared food when money is scarce,rather than buying a quantity ofingredients (and fuel) to prepare a dishthemselves. The Ga, noted for beingamong the most economicallydisadvantaged in the city, rely heavily onstreet food and children as young as fouror five years of age are often given moneyfor street foods and allowed to buy whatthey want (Ga Mashie Study Team,1996). Street foods are a major aspect ofthe urban food system for both vendorsand consumers, playing a prominent rolein food access strategies for the urbanpoor. In Accra, the street-food sector is avibrant component of the local economyemploying over 60,000 people with anestimated annual turnover of US$100million and an annual profit of US$24million (Nicholaides 2008). Street foods inGhana range from snacks through localmeals to the more foreign styled foods.Especially in the urban centers, andperhaps with the exception of bread,frying is the predominant method ofstreet food preparation. Therefore

excessive reliance on street foods willnecessarily result in over-consumption ofthe high calorie oil-based foods. Thiscoupled with physical inactivity is believedto be contributing to the increasingprevalence of obesity and may explainthe overweight component of theoverweight mother-stunted childequation.

The safety of food in the urbanenvironment is a subject of concern. Theunhygienic conditions under which streetfoods are prepared and sold in Accraleave much to be desired. High levels ofbacterial contamination have beenreported in prepared meals andespecially in uncooked vegetables (i.e.salads served with prepared meals, forexample) (Akpedonu, 1997). Findingsfrom the Accra study suggest a stronglink between reliance on street food andprevalence of gastrointestinal infections.Residents themselves blamed thenumerous complaints of diarrhea or“upset stomach” on poorly cooked foodor the insanitary conditions under whichthe food was prepared or sold. Childrenliving in the over-crowded and poorsanitary conditions prevailing in GaMashie (and indeed other similarly poorareas of Accra) who are predominantlyfed street food are likely to be at a greaterrisk of infection and illness from both

contaminated food and the environmentin which they leave. The underweightcomponent of the overweight mother-stunted child equation can therefore beattributed to the effects of the poorquality diets being further aggravated byloss of appetite, inadequate food intakeand poor absorption of the nutrientsingested due to frequent illness episodes.

In conclusion, this case study of Accra,suggests a possible link between streetfoods and the dual burden ofunderweight and overweight as occurs indeveloping countries. Addressing theproblem poses a significant public healthchallenge since programmes to reduceunder-nutrition are in direct conflict tothose aimed at preventing over-nutrition.However, there could be commongrounds in some approaches as iscurrently being done by the Ghana HealthService together with other stakeholderssuch as UNICEF, the Global Alliance forImproved Nutrition (GAIN) and theNational Food Fortification Alliance.Under the national food fortificationprogramme, wheat flour and vegetable oilproduced in Ghana are now beingfortified, since these are the most widelyconsumed foods, to address the problemof micronutrient deficiencies arising from

Frying doughnuts over a wood fire

Streetfood: cooking fish in oil


consumption of poor quality diets. Wheatflour is fortified with iron, vitamins A andB, folic acid and zinc and fortifiedvegetable oil has been enriched withvitamin A. These are being donealongside intense public educationpromoting good food choices andhealthy lifestyles. Examples of keymessages being communicated are:

“Eat fruits and vegetables and avariety of other foods to stay healthy.If you should use wheat flour orvegetable oil, choose fortifiedvegetable oil. Remember to alwaysuse oil in moderation.”

This is a two-prong approach toaddressing the dietary aspects of thedual burden problem. Tackling the myriadproblems of the poor urban environmentmay also seem daunting but ensuringstreet food safety has been an ongoingpublic health priority. Several initiativesinvolving the food industry, foodstandards and research institutes havebrought some improvements in thesector through education of both vendorsand consumers. One such initiative worthmentioning is the Unilever (Ghana)sponsored training of over 4,000 vendorsin basic hygiene. Another is the coalitionpartnership approach funded by DFID andjointly managed by the Natural ResourcesInstitute (UK) and the Food ResearchInstitute (Ghana), out of which severalpromotion materials have been developed

(http://www.nri.org/projects/streetfoods/projects2.htm, accessed 27/07/09). Atthe end of the day however, commonsense apparently prevails and people domake good choices. A mother in theAccra study was quoted as saying,

“Don’t you see thosewomen selling by thebig drain [an opensewer]? Flies land ontheir food, and if we eatit, we get sick.”

Similarly, a street food vendor noted, “Ifyou do not cook [the food] well,everyone will boycott you, becausewhat you are selling is being sold bydozens of people in the samevicinity…..”

ReferencesAkpedonu P. 1997. Microbiology of streetfoods from a high density community inAccra. Final report submitted to theJapan International Co-operation Agency.

Caballero B. 2005. A nutrition paradox:Underweight and obesity in developingcountries. New England Journal ofMedicine 352(15):1514-1516.

Doak CM, Adair LS, Bentley M, MonteiroC, Popkin BM. 2005. The dual burdenhousehold and the nutrition transitionparadox. International Journal of ObesityRelated Metabolic Disorders 29:129-36.

Ga Mashie Study Team. 1996. GaMashie: A participatory rapid appraisal offood security in a densely populatedurban community. Noguchi MemorialInstitute for Medical Research/CENCOSAD/International Food PolicyResearch Institute, Accra.

Maxwell D, Levin C, Armar-Klemesu M,Ruel M, Morris S, Ahiadeke C. 2000.Urban livelihoods and food and nutritionsecurity in Greater Accra, Ghana.Research Report 112, International FoodPolicy Research Institute, WashingtonDC.

Monteiro CA, Moura EC, Conde WL,Popkin BM. 2004. Bulletin of the WorldHealth Organisation. 82(12): 940-946.

Nicolaides L. 2008. Enhancing foodsecurity through improvements to streetvended foods, Natural ResourcesInstitute, University of Greenwich, UK.

Dr Margaret Armar-Klemesu is a Senior Research

Fellow and Head of the Nutrition Department at the

Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at

the University of Ghana, Legon.

Dr Armar-Klemesu graduated from the University of

London (School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

with a MSc degree in Nutrition (Public Health option)

and a PhD in Applied Human Nutrition.

Dr Armar-Klemesu’s research interests and areas of

expertise include maternal and child health and

nutrition intervention research and evaluation, food

consumption and food security assessment and

development of vulnerability indicators and food and

nutrition policy analysis.

Dr Armar-Klemesu has wide research and

consultancy experience. Her research collaborations

include evaluations of the focused ante-natal care

package with the Population Council and the

universal free delivery care policy with Immpact,

University of Aberdeen. She collaborated with the

International Food Policy Research Institute on the

much acclaimed Accra Urban Livelihoods, Food and

Nutrition Security study. She has also provided

consultancy services in food security assessment for

Technoserve and in infant and young child feeding

practices and food consumption for Freedom from

Hunger (US), LINKAGES and Ghana Sustainable

Change Projects (Academy for Educational

Development, US).

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24

Out and About

Sweet success down under Syngenta is taking part in a novel sugarcane biofuels research collaboration.Working with Queensland University ofTechnology (QUT) and FarmaculeBioindustries has jump started researchactivities by incorporating staff from eachorganisation. This exciting projectfocuses on the production of sugar canecellulosic ethanol from waste (bagasse).

The researchers have the ideal base fortheir studies – the heart of QUT, inBrisbane, Australia – known as theSyngenta Centre for Sugar Cane BiofuelsDevelopment (SCSCBD). The team has10 members, four from Syngenta and sixfrom the University, with funding supportfrom the Queensland state government.“Working side by side in the lab every dayand using technologies from both partieshas enabled our research to be moreproductive,” explains Jason Geijskes,Sugar Cane Transformation Team Leader(Brisbane). Such a meeting of minds hasstimulated significant advances in sugarcane transformation and processengineering. The project has alsobenefited from a close partnership withscientists at Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc.in the United States.

The SCSCBD is part of a Syngentastrategy to elevate sugar cane to a keycrop within the company. Australia is amajor sugar cane exporter, and Brisbaneis recognized globally as a centre ofexcellence for sugar cane R&D, enablingaccess to key knowledge andtechnology. The integration of Syngentaplant-expressed enzyme technology withgene expression and transformationtechnologies under development at theCentre will likely be a winningcombination in making cellulosic ethanolfrom sugar cane bagasse economicallyviable.

It’s all in the formulationSyngenta’s unique formulation robot wasofficially launched at Jealott’s Hill inAugust by Princess Anne (daughter ofQueen Elizabeth II). The Princess carriedout the first experiments when she visitedthe UK R&D site in July. This is a majorinvestment in crop protection technologywhich will accelerate our developmentprogram to bring products to market andenhance our ability to feed a globalpopulation.

The robot is the culmination of a five yearproject bringing together scientists,

engineers and software specialists. Therobot can make almost any liquidagrochemical formation in small amountsand perform a basic series of tests to seeif those formulations are of interest forfurther research. It is a breakthrough ininnovation and delivers at a speed benchscientists can only dream of, helpingthose same scientists to be moreinnovative and productive than everbefore when creating new products.

The Princess spoke enthusiasticallyabout the role played by science infeeding the growing global populationand protecting biodiversity, “What you dohere is to ensure that food is grown safelyand well and understanding thebiodiversity in which it grows. That needsa lot of skilled and talented people toensure that what is done here is the bestthat science can provide.”

David Barnett, Formulation DesignChemist (Jealott’s Hill): “It’s really good forthe team to be recognized and rewardedby a visit from Her Royal Highness.”

Opening doors in ChileSyngenta Seeds recently opened its newResearch Centre in Arica, Chile, and hasalso opened its doors to local universitystudents as part of a novel ‘Students inPractice’ training program.

Through the program, students arebased at Syngenta (Arica) for periods ofone to three months and work alongsidean employee who trains and monitorstheir progress. The placement is part ofthe degree course. Once graduated,students are employed at the Arica site

The SCSCBD team - from left to right, JasonGeijskes, Paulo DeLucca, Anthony Palupeand Manuel Sainz

A robot, a Princess and John Hammond(Formulation Team Leader)

Our intrepid reporters, Carolyn Riches andAshley Collins have been tracking downsome more interesting things which Syngentapeople have been involved in.


or can take employment elsewhere. “Myteam has taken the time to teach meeverything I need to learn. It’s good aglobal company like Syngenta puts theirtrust in young people, providing us withhi-tech, modern jobs,” says recentstudent recruit, Diego Sepulveda. Toadvance their careers, studentsotherwise have to move to Santiago(2,000 miles away).

“The universities and local Governmentare ecstatic about the program,” says JimPetta, Station Manager (Arica). “It’s greatfor us too – our new recruits are alreadytrained in many essential tasks,” addsJim. Syngenta also shares its visitors withthe universities through a ‘VisitingProfessor’ scheme, providing inspirationfor research projects.

Going forward, Syngenta Arica aims toemploy people from the local area.Benefits include a bonus scheme foremployees to spend on their children’seducation – good for community buildingand for raising the standard of educationin the region.

SBC builds a strong reputationSince opening in 2008, SyngentaBiotechnology China (SBC) has beenworking hard to build strong relationshipswith key stakeholders within the Chinesegovernments and research institutions.“Because of their efforts to establish apositive reputation for our company,agriculture ministries and localgovernments are now looking toSyngenta to help develop guidelines andrules for agricultural business processeswithin the country,” says Roger Kemble,head, Crop Genetics Research.

One of these relationships was formedthis summer when SBC entered into aresearch collaboration with ChinaAgricultural University (CAU), a majoruniversity located in Beijing, China.

The research collaboration with CAU isaimed at discovering and validating novel

gene functions for major crops such ascorn and soybean, and will focus on yieldincrease, nitrogen utilization optimizationand other valuable agronomic traits.“Collaborating with CAU will helpaccelerate our innovation and increaseour efficiency, so that together, we canbetter address the inevitable challengeswithin the agriculture sector,” says XunWang, head, SBC.

“Syngenta is a world leader in agriculturaltechnology with strong commitment inChina,” says Qixin Sun, vice president,CAU, “This has been well demonstratedby building this first foreign-fundedagricultural biotech center in Beijing.”

US employees combat hunger inlocal communitiesThe initiative to support local hunger relieforganizations is underway at Syngentasites in the United States. This summer,Volunteers in Action, a group of SyngentaCrop Protection employees fromGreensboro, N.C., teamed up withDulcinea® and fellow Syngentaemployees to raise items and awarenessfor a local food bank. Employeesgathered on the site’s front lawn todonate their non-perishable items inexchange for a sweet treat: watermelonand cantaloupe from Dulcinea®, aSyngenta-owned company. The leftoverfruit was donated to the food bank alongwith canned goods and other itemscollected. At the end of the drive, nearly6,000 pounds of food was collected bySyngenta.

Employees at Syngenta BiotechnologyInc. (SBI) have also coordinated with a

local agency to hold food drives for aprogram called “Backpack Buddies”. Byholding several food drives throughoutthe year and traveling to a nearby school,SBI employees helped distribute “kid-friendly”, non-perishable items tostudents who would otherwise go hungryover weekends. The concept wasdeveloped after school nurses noticed anincrease of hungry children comingforward on Monday mornings withstomach aches and dizziness. Packingthe food items in non-descript backpackseach Friday, volunteers help students tobridge the ‘hunger gap’ between Fridayafternoons and Monday mornings. SBIemployees plan to hold several fooddrives throughout the coming school yearto support this programme and otherslike it.

**With thanks to Carly Razo for her helpwith this story**

InnoCentive@Work: Working beyondborders

InnoCentive@Work, a novel innovationplatform, has taken off within Researchand Development (R&D). With newchallenges posted regularly and solverslocated across Syngenta, R&Dcolleagues are now able to shareknowledge like never before. “TheInnoCentive@Work platform is a greatresource for our employees to engagethe broader Syngenta community,beyond their local sites,” says Joe Byrum,InnoCentive@Work program manager. “Itcreates a more open and transparentenvironment to address our everydaychallenges.”

Collaboration across borders isn’t theonly attribute the program boasts.Rewarding innovative solutions is a majorpart as well. Employees who offer thebest solutions are recognized for theirideas and receive 200 reward points. Atmost locations, these reward points willtranslate directly into the local currency.

How does it feel to have your solutionrecognized through the program? “It’srewarding to know that the work done inour group is useful for a much wideraudience than we initially realized,” saysAlan Hall, recent successful solver. VisitInnoCentive@Work today to check outexisting challenges or to post one of yourown.

25

Diego Sepulveda is pleased to havegraduated from the Students in PracticeProgram (Chile)

Syngenta and Ducks Unlimited Canadapartner together to protect waterfowl habitats

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Representatives from CAU and SBC at thesigning ceremony held in Beijing, China.From left to right: Professor Chuanqing Sun,CAU, Dr Qixin Sun, VP of CAU, Dr Xun Wang,Head of SBC, Prof Zichao Li, CAU

Employees at Syngenta Greensborocollected nearly 6,000 pounds of food at arecent food drive


Scienceand

TechnologyPrize 2009


Gunther Stiewe, Bad Salzuflen, Germany— 2008 Winner“Being awarded the Science and Technology Prize was a greathonour for me. Winning the prize has increased interest aroundSyngenta in the area of oilseed rape hybrids. The resultingdiscussion from this interest could continue to be very fruitful forthe further development in this project.”

Gabriel Scalliet, Stein, Switzerland— 2007 Winner“Since winning the prize, I have taken on new responsibilities andbeen promoted to a team leader. The prize has not only helped ingetting the necessary trust from senior managers but alsoillustrated my willing and potential to innovate in my field ofscientific competency.”

Judith Bowler, Jealott’s Hill, UK— 2007 Winner“Being a prize winner has increased my involvement in Biosciencefungal projects, broadened my knowledge and raised my profile asthe expert in filamentous fungal transformation. I also had theopportunity to attend the Syngenta Epigenetics Conference inDecember 2008 – a fascinating area of research.”

Olivier Loiseluer, Stein, Switzerland— 2007 Winner “Being recognized by Syngenta as a Science and TechnologyPrize winner has helped highlight the impact of my work on theBISAM project and on a tiny molecule, can have. Since winningthe prize, I am leading a project for a novel nematicide, which ourentire team is excited to be part of!”

Deepak Kaundun, Jealott’s Hill, UK— 2005 Winner“The prize has been a stepping stone towards better visibility andrecognition of herbicide resistance research within the company.It has allowed me to establish further collaborations with differentgroups in Crop Protection and Seeds to create additional valuefor the business.”

Nominate your colleagues today! Fill out a nomination form foundon the Syngenta Fellows intranet site and email it a local Fellow.Besides recognition and celebration of their work, winners willreceive a chance to present their work to major R&D sites acrossSyngenta, a plaque to record the achievement and a cash prize –£2,500 (or local currency equivalent).

This year’s Science and Technology Prizeis open for nominations. From now untilOctober 19th, you can nominate yourcolleagues who have made outstandingcontributions in the areas of science andtechnology. Find out below how the prizehas impacted the careers of previouswinners…


28

Over 30 years of

in chemistry– an interview with Mike Turnbull


“My thirty years away from the golfcourse ends this autumn” smiled anexcited Mike Turnbull. His prohibition onplaying golf is symptomatic of hisperfectionist nature. “I gave it up in mylate teens because I decided that to beany good I had to play at least twice aweek and work came first.” Golf seemsto be an odd choice of sport for someonebest known for his supreme team playerskills. “I may not have been the one todiscover x or y, but I do know that myteam have made significant contributionsto the company and its science.”

Joining ICI Pharmaceuticals in 1973,Mike first worked on anti-obesity drugsbefore returning to Cambridge to studyfor his PhD supervised by the legendaryProfessor Sir Alan Battersby, father ofMartin, Head of Integrated Solutions inR&D.

Mike has always been interested in theorganic chemicals that maintain livingsystems and wanted to do chemistry ina biological environment. His PhD was astudy of synthetic porphyrins which mightmimic a haem group in the haemoglobinthat carries oxygen in the blood of manyspecies, including humans. “That was inthe days before personal computers andI even typed my doctorate myself,” hesaid. “It was an amazing time to be one ofBattersby’s group and his alumni havegone on to positions all round the world.I chose to come to Jealott’s Hill abovetwo other job offers because I decidedthis was a place where chemists couldlead rather than follow.”

Mike joined insecticide chemistry in 1977and worked on pyrethroid chemistry at atime when Jealott’s Hill chemists werefocused on finding new examples thatwere free of the intellectual property

generated by Michael Elliott atRothamsted. It was an exciting time.Mike: “During my first ten years in thecompany many products were inventedthat have stood the test of time. I sharedan office with some amazing chemistslike Dave Cartwright who discovered theherbicides fluazifop and fomesafen. Ininsecticide Chemistry, we wereinvestigating the ‘type two’ pyrethroidsand both lambda-cyhalothrin (Karate®)and tefluthrin (Force®) were discoveredduring this period. The key thing forlambda was finding a route to make iteconomically. Mike Robson, who retiredtwo years ago, made a key breakthroughand it is now one of our most importantproducts. The environment was smallenough that you interacted with thesechemists every day: it was verystimulating scientifically.”

Within a very short space of time hisqualities as a team leader wererecognized and with John Finney (laterhead of R & D) he helped to develop theproject team system which was to driveinnovation throughout the company. The‘gang of four’ system was introduced tocombine the creativity of biologists andchemists, and it worked. “What held usback then was the lack of a searchabledatabase of our biological results and,being an early enthusiast for computers,I was asked to be on a team to create thecompany’s first, known to us all asAEGIS. One of the remaining problemswas the slowness of the link to the IBMmainframe based at Blakely nearManchester.” Mike’s ability as anetworker, in both the computer andpersonal sense, has been one of his keycomponents to success. He is able bothto see the potential of people and ideas,and working with Mike has proved to bethe starting point of many a fine career.

Mike says “The thing I am most proud ofis that I helped to make projects work.”He was instrumental in establishing theworkgroup concept where biologists,biochemists and chemists worked inteams, focused on business targets. Formany years Mike led the Insecticide NewLeads Workgroup but, unlike manyprojects today, workgroups were notbased on a particular chemical series buton a biological target. Rather like theNewSTAN project today, one of the firstworkgroups he was involved withtargeted nematodes. Over the years Mikehas worked on a huge range ofchemistries but has never lost his interestin the biological effects of chemistry. In2004 he had the biggest change in his

chemical career when after 27 years ofworking mainly on insecticides he movedto work exclusively in herbicide chemistry.“This was a huge challenge. It was quitesomething to start again to learn thebiology and biochemistry of plants.”However, Mike has already had a majoreffect in herbicide chemistry with hisknowledge of data and databasesleading to two areas ripe for exploitation.One retrospective search provided astarting point for a more potent activeingredient with the same mode of actionas atrazine and the other led to the THORproject. This is typical of Mike, usingcomputing knowledge to reveal chemicalareas worth revisiting in the light of newrequirements and new commercialopportunities.

When asked what he would miss aboutleaving Jealott’s Hill, Mike said that it hadto be the teamwork. “You can’t inventproducts without working in a team.Ideally, you develop some competency indisciplines other than your own, so youcan really understand all the issuesrelevant to designing and developing amodern pesticide.”

Along with being a great team player theother attribute Mike exemplifiedthroughout our conversation and indeedthrough his working life is his ability toenthuse. His enthusiasm for chemistry isalmost infectious. Oddly though, afterretirement he intends to hang up the labcoat for good. “I have loved my work asa chemist but it is now time for somethingdifferent. Loads of travel.” Married toAntoinette Mannion, a former SeniorLecturer in Geography at ReadingUniversity, Mike has every intention ofcarrying on with their tour of the globe:that is, when he is not in the stalls at aWest End Theatre. “I reckon we haveseen about 70% of current plays on in theWest End of London and have everyintention of seeing more.” His finalcomment before we concluded theinterview was “There is certainly lifebeyond Syngenta. Make sure peoplereading the article don’t think I havedied!” As described, the pace of travel,golf and theatre going, along with otherinterests such as in photography, Shonasculpture and Scottish landscapepaintings means that no one couldaccuse us of even having dared tosuggest it.

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The 16th October 2009 is World FoodDay, sponsored by the United NationsFood and Agriculture Organisation (theFAO). This year’s theme is “Achievingfood security in times of crisis”. NormanBorlaug, whose pioneering work on highyielding crops, paved the way for thegreen revolution which enabled manypoor smallholder farmers to feedthemselves passed away recently. Hislegacy is the foundation on which allmodern agriculture rests, and, as youwould have read in this edition of ScienceMatters, Syngenta is also playing a bigpart in helping farmers providesustainable healthy nutritious food for usall. There are many challenges aheadhowever. High among these are theincreasing population and a reduction inwater available for agriculture due toclimate change. As Professor Armar-Klemesu discusses in her externalperspective, these pressures are evenharder in the developing world wherepoverty and a lack of access to freshfood is not only causing malnutrition, butalso health issues like obesity where thepoor access fatty street foods becausethey are cheap. Syngenta is engaging inthe debate and working to help solvesome of these key nutritional problems.

Africa has over 500 million hectares ofpotential agricultural land, an area largerthan the entire European Union but, asthe population in Africa is expected todouble to 1.8 billion people by 2050,there is an urgent need to increaseproductivity significantly. Lack of access

to technology and markets, soil erosion,water scarcity, education and health poseadditional challenges. Our CEO MikeMack recently visited Kenya to meetemployees and customers, and to learnmore about how we enable agriculture inAfrica through our work both for large-scale farming and smallholders. Farmingemploys over 80 percent of Kenya’spopulation and generates more than halfof its exports. The primary domestic foodcrops are beans, cassava, potatoes,corn, sorghum and fruit, mainly grown bysubsistence smallholders. Mike Mackcommented “Since the vast majority offarms in sub-Saharan Africa are onehectare or less in size, we must addressthe needs of Africa’s smallholder farmersif we hope to achieve the goal ofagricultural development in Africa”.

For these smallholders, weeds present aconstant threat to the survival of theircrops. Around 25 tons of weeds perhectare compete with crops for space,nutrients, light and water. Yield losses canrange from 25 percent to total cropfailure. Between 50 and 70 percent of thetotal labour needed to produce a cropcan go on hand-weeding, with a typicalone-hectare smallholder farm requiringan average of 200 hours of hand-weeding each year. Most of this is doneby women, walking around 10 kilometresin a stooped position to weed just onehectare. This results in back problemsand sometimes permanent deformities tothe spine. Nearly 70 percent of farmers’children also help with weeding, keeping

them away from school. Syngenta isworking with local farmers to help provideaccess to cheap technologies toovercome these issues. For example,Syngenta has launched a range of smallpacks at an affordable price. Branded asUwezo (meaning ‘ability’ in Swahili), theseproducts are helping to increase farmers’incomes by improving crop yields andquality in a region where food is scarce.Farmers who have used the Uwezorange have reported productivity gains ofup to 50%, making this a valuable tool forcombating poverty levels in rural Africa.

These, and many other initiatives aroundthe world, are a few examples of howSyngenta and the Syngenta Foundationare working together with farmers toovercome the challenges they face, sothat we can all achieve the goal of“healthy plants – healthy people” thetheme of this edition.

Stuart John Dunbar

Stuart John Dunbar is Editor of Science Matters.

He joined the company 24 years ago as an Insect

Electrophysiologist. He is currently a Senior

Syngenta Fellow and Group Leader of Biochemistry

working in the Bioscience Section at Jealott’s Hill

Editor’s comments Food and nutrition, reflections on how Syngenta is engaging with farmers in Africa.

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Editor-in-Chief: Sandro Aruffo

Editors: Stuart John Dunbar and Mike Bushell

The Editors would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of John Emsley and the

authors and other persons named in each article.

Design: nowhere group

Production support: Kre8tive Communications Ltd

Print: Geerings Print Limited

Science Matters is published by Syngenta, Jealott’s Hill International Research Centre, Bracknell,

Berkshire, RG42 6EY United Kingdom. Main contact for comment and future content is

Stuart J. Dunbar.

Unless otherwise indicated, trademarks indicated thus ® or TM are the property of a Syngenta

Group Company. The Syngenta wordmark is a trademark of Syngenta International AG

© Syngenta International AG, 2009. All rights reserved.

Editorial completion September 2009.

Science Matters is printed using water reduction processes, including a completely chemical

and water free printing plate making process. In addition, all water used in the actual printing

process is re-circulated and new water is only added to replace that lost by evaporation. Science

Matters is printed on 9lives80 which is produced with 80 percent recovered fibre comprising 10

percent packaging waste, 10 percent best white waste, 60 percent de-inked waste fibre and

only 20 percent virgin totally chlorine free fiber sourced from sustainable forests.

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statementsThis document contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as “expect”, “would”,“will”, “potential”, “plans”, “prospects”, “estimated”, “aiming”, “on track”, and similar expressions. Such statements may besubject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. We refer you toSyngenta’s publicly available filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for information about these andother risks and uncertainties. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward looking statements to reflect actualresults, changed assumptions or other factors. This document does not constitute, or form part of, any offer or invitationto sell or issue, or any solicitation of any offer, to purchase or subscribe for any ordinary shares in Syngenta AG, or SyngentaADSs, nor shall it form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any contract therefore

science matters : autumn 2009

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