Twenty six per cent of Canada's core biotech companies are Ag-biotechnology, compared with five per cent in the United States. Activities include the use of microorganisms, plant cells to create commercially viable products, and transformation of plants to improve specific qualities. Goals ate to increase the world's food supply, enable crops and animals to resist pests and diseases, increase the nutritional content of food, and improve production efficiency. I believe that there are business opportunities in the agriculture sector for Canada and other countries such as Korea to collaborate. These are research to research : institute to institute: business to business, and combinations of these areas. However, for these opportunities to become a reality we need to increase our awareness of each other's activities and needs. My presentation today was not designed with specifics, but to encourage some strategic thinking by both countries on how we can do business together in agriculture and biotechnology.

Plant seed oil-bodies or oleosomes ate the repository of the neutral lipid stored in seeds. These organelles in many oilseeds may comprise half of the total cellular volume. Oleosomes are surrounded by a half-unit membrane of phospholipid into which are embedded proteins called oleosins. Oleosins are present at high density on the oil-body surface and after storage proteins comprise the most abundant proteins in oilseeds. Oleosins are specifically targeted and anchored to oil-bodies after co-translation on the ER. It has been shown that the amino-acid sequences responsible for this unique targeting reside primarily in the central hydrophobic tore of the oleosin polypeptide. In addition, a signal-like sequence is found near the junction of the hydrophobic domain and ann N-terminal hydrophilic / amphipathic domain. This "signal" which is uncleaved is also essential for correct targeting. Oil-bodies and their associated oleosins may be recovered by floatation centrifugation of aqueous seed extracts. This simple partitioning step results in a dramatic enrichment for oleosins in the oil-body fraction. In the light of these properties, we reasoned that it would be feasible to create fusion proteins on oil-bodies comprising oleosins and an additional valuable protein of pharmaceutical or industrial interest. It was further postulated that if these proteins were displayed on the outer surface of oil-bodies, it would be possible to release them from the purified oil-bodies using chemical or proteolytic cleavage. This could result in a simple means of recovering high-value protein from seeds at a significant (i.e. commercial) scale. This procedure has been successfully reduced to practice for a wide variety of proteins of therapeutic, industrial and food no. The utillity of the method will be discussed using a blood anticoagulant, hirudin, and industrial enzymes as key examples.

The impact of plant genetic engineering, a technology born in the early 1980's, is beginning to be felt across the world in the 1990's. The first wave of engineered plant produce are reaching consumers in the supermarket and many more are destined to follow Transformation technology now exists for most plant, including the four staple crops-maize, wheat, rice, and soybean. Early targets of genetic engineering include plane possessing insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, with future goals set on increasing harvestable yield, improving nutritional quality, and making specialty products. This review describes some of the milestones in plant biotechnology, the U.S. regulatory agencies, field trial numbers and deregulated plants, commercialization criteria, examples of commercialized plants, and future prospects of plant biotechnology.

For genetic engineering to be commercially viable, an efficient transformation system is needed to produce transgenic plane from diverse genotypes ("generalized protocol"). Development of such a system requires optimization of a number of components such as gene transfer agent, plant tissues competent for both regeneration and transformation, and control of transgene expression. Although several novel gene transfer methods have been developed for plane, a majority of stably transformed plane express the introduced genes at low levels. Moreover, silencing of selectable marker genes shortly after their incorporation into plant chromosomes may result in low recovery of transgenic tissues from selection. Matrix attachment regions (MARs) are DNA sequences that bind to the cell's proteinaceous nuclear matrix to form DNA loop domains. MARs have been shown to increase transgene expression in tobacco cells, and reduce position in mature transgenic plants. Flanking an antibiotic resistance transgene with MARs should therefore lead to improved rates of transformation in a diversity of species, and may permit recalcitrant species and genotypes to be successfully transformed. Literature review and recent data from my laboratory suggest that MARs can serve as a transformation booster in recalcitrant plant species.

Salicylic acid (SA) is involved in the establishment of systemic acquired resistance (SAR) in many plant including tobacco. Considering the important role of SA in disease resistance, biosynthetic and metabolic pathways of SA in tobacco have been studied extensively: The initial step for biosynthetic pathway of SA is conversion of phenylalanine to trans-cinnamic acid, followed by decarboxylation of trans-cinnamic acid to benzoic acid and ie subsequent ring hydroxylation at the C-2 position to form SA. In TMV inoculated tobacco, most of the newly synthesized SA is glucosylated or methylated. Methyl salicylate has been identified as a biologically active, volatile signal. In contrast, the two glucosylated forms accumulate in the vicinity of lesions and consist of SA glucoside, a major metabolite, and SA glucose ester, a relatively minor from. Two enzymes involved in SA biosynthesis and metabolism have been purified and characterized : benzoic acid 2-hydroxylase which catalyzes conversion of benzoic acid to SA; UDP-Glucose: SA 1-O-D glucosyltransferase which converts SA to SA glucose ester. Further studies of the biosynthetic and metabolic pathways of SA will help to elucidate the SAR signal transduction pathway and provide potential tools for the manipulation of disease resistance.

Plants belonging to the category of 2n apomixis or agamospermy form embryos and seeds without the processes of normal meiosis and syngamy. Seeds produced in this way have identical genotype of their maternal parent. Three different types of agamospermy are recognized: diplospory, apospory, and adventitious (adventive) embryony. $F_1$ hybrid cultivars cannot be used as seed sources in the next ($F_2$) generation because this generation would be extremely variable as a result of genetic segregation. Hybrid vigor is also reduced in the $F_2$ generation. Therefore, parental stocks for hybrid seed production need to be maintained and cross must be continuously repeated. Agamospermic 2n apomixis would make it possible to fix the genotype of a superior variety so that clonal seeds faithfully representing that genotype could be continuously and cheaply produced independent of pollination. That is, $F_1$ hybrid seeds could be produced for many generations without loss of vigor or genotype alteration. Production of apomictic $F_1$ hybrid seed would be simplified because line isolation would not be necessary to produce seed or to maintain parental lines, and the use of male-sterile lines could be avoided. Overall, apomixis would enable a significant reduction in hybrid seed production costs. Additionally, the production of clonal seed is not only important for seed propagated crops, but also for the propagation of heterozygous fruit trees and timbers. Clonal seed would help avoid costly and time-consuming vegetative propagating methods that are currently used to ensure the large-scale production of these plants. Apomixis is scattered throughout the plant kingdom, but few important agricultural crops possess this trait Therefore, most research to date has centered on introgressing the trait of apomixis into agricultural crops such as wheat, maize, and some forage grasses from wild distant relatives by traditional cross breeding. The classical breeding approach, however is slow and often impeded by many breeding barriers. These problems could be surmounted by taking mutagenesis or molecular approach. Arabidopsis thaliana is a tiny sexually reproducing plant and is convenient in constructing and screening in molecular researches. Male-sterile mutants of Arabidopsis are particularly suitable genetic background for mutagenesis and screening for apomictic mutants. Molecular approaches towards isolating the genes controlling the apomictic process are feasible. Direct isolation of genes conferring apomixis development would greatly facilitate the transfer of this trait to wide variety of crops. Such studies are now in progress.