Scientists at a major international research centre based in Mexico say recent donations from billionaire philanthropists have taken them significantly closer to providing poor farmers with more productive, nutritional and resistant varieties of wheat and maize at a critical time.
"We believe that we are witnessing the start of a genuine new agricultural revolution that will provide food security for generations to come," Thomas Lumpkin, director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, said at this week's inauguration of facilities funded by a $25m (£16.1m) donation from Mexican telecommunications magnateCarlos Slim, the world's richest person.
Lumpkin said the new laboratories and greenhouses would double research capacity at the centre, known by its Spanish abbreviation CIMMYT. The centre, famous for launching the "Green Revolution" in Mexico and south Asia in the 1960s, is located just outside Mexico City.
Lumpkin and Slim were joined at the ceremony by Bill Gates, No 2 on the global rich list, whose contributions reputedly saved the centre from going under a decade ago.
All of them stressed that a perfect storm of rising demand for basic grains, dwindling resources, new pests and the additional pressures expected from climate change could have catastrophic impacts in many parts of the world if small-scale farmers are not given affordable access to new varieties that can better cope with these challenges.
Interviewed after the event, Lumpkin said the biggest potential for doing this comes from applying technology developed in human genetic research to germ plasm. He said CIMMYT is at the vanguard of these efforts because of its massive gene banks storing 28,000 varieties of maize and 120,000 varieties of wheat.
"Before you were dealing with shadows and vague things off in the distance, but now we have a sharp focus and can see much more," Lumpkin said of the difference between the old methods of hybridisation and the new possibilities for precision picking and mixing of desired traits.
CIMMYT plans to make the information from its research easily available and understandable to breeders around the world so that they can use it to develop their own varieties specifically designed to address local problems.
More controversially, CIMMYT's revamped facilities are designed to increase the centre's capacity for transgenic research. While insisting that transgenics will remain a relatively minor part of the Mexico programme, probably reaching about 10% in the next five years, Lumpkin argues it could prove critical where manipulation of natural diversity proves insufficient.
CIMMYT scientists say it is particularly important, for example, to find ways of increasing heat tolerance in wheat varieties used in south Asia, where demand is booming and temperatures are predicted to rise dramatically in the next decade.
Lumpkin claims that when delivered by non-profit organisations such as CIMMYT, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can help tackle rural inequality by spreading technology that is currently largely limited to the developed world.
CIMMYT is already working with experimental GMO maize crops in Kenya and several other African countries using "tried and tested" traits provided for free by multinational companies under special agreements. Lumpkin says companies such as Monsanto are willing to do this when the varieties produced are designed for markets that are not commercially significant.
In Mexico, CIMMYT's GM research is limited to wheat, but the new facilities open the possibility of expanding this to much more controversial research with maize.
Mexico is a centre of origin of the crop and the country is home to a vibrant anti-transgenic movement rooted in concerns about contamination of local varieties, deep distrust of official guarantees of safety, and suspicion of the motives of proponents of these technologies.
Campaigners are trying to prevent the Mexican government authorising big commercial projects on GM maize, following a period of several years of experimental and pilot schemes they say have not been properly monitored.
"They talk about transgenics as the solution to world hunger and inequality but it is a false solution," said Greenpeace Mexico's spokesman on agriculture, Aleira Lara. "Even if it is altruistic there are risks. What we need is for the state to attend to the real problems. We need more state budgets to do things such as invest in improving irrigation systems."
CIMMYT scientists, and their billionaire backers, are careful to express their respect for Mexican sensitivities about maize, but are also committed to the idea that the potential benefits out way the risks.
At the ceremony in Mexico on Wednesday, Gates said there were "legitimate issues, but solvable issues" around GM and lauded CIMMYT's role trying to sidestep concerns about monopolisation of the technology by the multinationals. His foundation dedicates about 8% of itsagricultural budget to GM-associated projects.
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