© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd

Munich and WashingtonGermany has sent shock waves through theinternational agricultural research commu-nity by making heavy cuts in its financialsupport for six high-profile agriculturalresearch centres in developing countries.

The cuts were made last month followinga decision to halve the DM35 million (US$18million) research portfolio of Germany’sMinistry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ)over the next four years. They are part of aDM30 billion austerity programme intro-duced by the government to stabilize thecountry’s economy.

Basic research carried out through theConsultative Group for International Agri-cultural Research (CGIAR), a network of 16international research centres, will be particu-larly hard hit. In 1999, the BMZ contributedaround $17 million, of which $6 million wasfor institutional core funding, towards theCGIAR’s overall budget of $345 million. Nextyear, the BMZ’s contribution to the CGIAR’score funding will be reduced by $2.5 million.

Six of the CGIAR’s 16 institutes will carry the cuts. These are the InternationalMaize and Wheat Improvement Center(CIMMYT) in Mexico City, the InternationalPotato Institute in Peru, the InternationalCenter for Agricultural Research in the DryAreas (ICARDA) in Syria, the International

Crops Research Institute for the Semi-AridTropics in India, the West Africa Rice Devel-opment Association (WARDA) in the IvoryCoast, the International Food PolicyResearch Institute in Washington DC and theInternational Service for National Agricul-tural Research in the Netherlands.

CIMMYT, one of the world’s leadinggrain-research organizations, will lose BMZ’scontribution of $400,000 to its annual corebudget of about $15 million. “This is a signif-icant blow,” says Timothy Reeves, who directsthe centre, which has about 120 scientific

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personnel in Mexico City and another 300 in16 countries around the world. He says thecuts have meant that 14 scientific personnelare being made redundant at CIMMYT’sheadquarters at the end of the year.

Research at CIMMYT, founded in 1966, iswidely credited with having helped to avertfamines in Asia in the 1980s. Its scientists, inparticular Norman Borlaug, the 1970 NobelPeace Prize laureate, were largely responsiblefor the scientific breakthroughs behind the‘Green Revolution’. Today 40 per cent ofCIMMYT’s efforts are concentrated onAfrica, providing underdeveloped regionswith drought-tolerant maize.

Although CIMMYT will still be able toapply for project-based BMZ funds, Reeves isconcerned that long-term scientific projects— such as research on wheat diseases —could be seriously at risk. He is also worriedthat Germany’s decision could affect othernations. “Everybody is concerned,” he says.“If Germany does this, what will other coun-tries do?”

Some of the ambitious scientific projectspursued by the five other CGIAR institutesaffected could also be damaged by the cuts.Marlene Diekmann, an expert in agriculturalresearch at the Deutsche Gesellschaft fürTechnische Zusammenarbeit, a government-owned German agency for technical cooper-ation with developing countries, describesthe cuts as “a disaster” for the whole system ofinternational agricultural research.

Diekmann is particularly concerned thatthe cuts may damage some of the CGIAR’smost valuable resources, such as ICARDA’sgene bank, which holds more than 117,000germplasm samples. ICARDA supplies morethan 30,000 samples from this collectioneach year to the global research community.

“The maintenance of a gene bank is costlyand cannot be financed by project-basedfunds alone,” she says. She points out thatsuccessful long-term research projectsstrongly depend on reliable institutionalfunding. “Reductions in core funding arelikely to result in a somewhat hasty chase forshort-term success, whereas innovative andsustainable long-term research will probablybe neglected,” she says.

Concern as Germany cuts fundsto agricultural research centres

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Jerusalem The Israeli government last week announceda ban on animal experiments in the schoolsystem, specifically citing the dissection offrogs. Minister of Education Yossi Sarid lastweek said that there are now ‘virtual’ waysof teaching students anatomy, so thatdissection is no longer justified.

But the ban and its potentialimplications immediately came under firefrom Rami Rahamimoff, a member of themedical faculty of the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, and chairman of the ministry ofeducation’s advisory committee on biologyteaching.

Rahamimoff said that the move will“dramatically affect the teaching of biology”and that frogs are not the main concern. Hepointed out that dissecting frogs is not partof the compulsory curriculum, and that datafrom the ministry itself show that fewerthan ten frogs a year are killed in schools.

His concern is that the sweepinglanguage of Sarid’s ban will include a morecommon kind of dissection, that of animalorgans and fish, which biology teachers buyfrom butcher’s shops. He is also worriedthat the ban will prohibit dissections bygifted high-school students enrolled inuniversity biology courses. Haim Watzman

Dissection banned in Israeli schools

Helping hand: Reeves (right) of CIMMYT, warnsof serious risks to long-term research.

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© 1999 Macmillan Magazines Ltd

WashingtonOfficials at the US National Science Foun-dation (NSF) are smarting at the results of asurvey released last week that places it nearthe bottom of a list of government servicesranked according to customer satisfaction.

Of 28 other participating programmes,only the Internal Revenue Service and theOccupational Safety & Health Administra-tion came lower. Top of the list was theAdministration for Children and Families.

The survey was sponsored by the Presi-dent’s Management Council and adminis-tered by the University of Michigan BusinessSchool. Replies to questions addressed tousers of federal services were used to rankthem on a 100-point index.

The survey asked grant applicants howwell the NSF had handled their requests.Nathaniel Pitts, director of the foundation’soffice of integrative activities, says its 70 percent rejection rate partly explains its lowscore of 57, compared to a mean of 68.6.

Of the 260 NSF survey respondentsinterviewed, 68 per cent had their grantapplications rejected. But the answers tosome questions in the survey have revealed

weaknesses that cannot be corrected merelyby raising the acceptance rate.

Respondents gave the agency a low scorefor the timeliness and efficiency of the pro-posal process. They also gave low marks toquestions on the quality of peer-review andthe fairness of the decision. Pitts says he ismost concerned about these measures, aspeer review is “the cornerstone of NSF”.

He adds that recent changes to the peer-review process — particularly new require-ments that weigh the impact of proposedresearch on society — may have contributedto the low score.

Jack Crow, director of the National HighMagnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee,Florida, which has received $18.5 million inNSF funds this year, says he is a “happy cus-tomer” of the agency. But he agrees that NSF’speer-review system could be improved.

NSF officials are to carry out a survey toexplore problem areas more fully, andpromise to participate in the consumer satis-faction index survey again next year. Theresults of the survey are available athttp://www.bus.umich.edu/research/nqrc/govt.html Paul Smaglik

The importance of the research carriedout by the CGIAR is widely recognized. Afterlast year’s system review of the organization, a panel of international experts headed byMaurice Strong, the founding executivedirector of the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme, concluded that investment inthe CGIAR had been “the most effective useof official development assistance”.

Alexander von der Osten, executive secre-tary of the CGIAR, says that support fromcountries other than Germany has remainedstrong. “Our overall budget has been gradu-ally going up,” he says.

He adds that the CGIAR has appealedagainst the cuts to both the finance ministerand the overseas development minister inGermany. “But we didn’t obtain anythingother than good words,” he says. “We need tomobilize public opinion so that peopleunderstand that this research is in the inter-ests of northern countries,” he adds.

Ironically, the cuts coincide with a recom-mendation by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung(FES), a foundation closely linked with Ger-many’s ruling Social Democrat Party, toincrease funding for the CGIAR. In a reporton possible benefits of genetic engineeringfor agriculture in developing countries, pub-lished last week, the FES concludes that “cutsin public funding of agricultural research rel-evant to developing countries mainly hit thepoor”.Quirin Schiermeier, Rex Dalton and Colin Macilwain

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NSF under fire in survey of customer satisfaction

Japan to bring in mandatory tests for GM foodsTokyoJapan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare(MHW) announced last week that tests onthe potential health risks of geneticallymodified (GM) foods will be mandatoryfrom April 2001. Such tests are currentlycarried out on a voluntary basis.

The ministry also announced that foodsconsidered ‘safe’ would be labelled. But howthis should be done is still under discussion,and the MHW says it is uncertain whetherthe labels would actually indicate safety, orwhether they would take a similar approachto that announced earlier this year by thecountry’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestryand Fisheries (MAFF).

MAFF’s draft regulations, released inAugust (see Nature 400, 605; 1999), require30 food products containing GM ingredientsto be labelled as such. Products with amixture of GM and non-GM ingredientsmust be labelled as ‘undifferentiated’.

Although the MHW hopes to includefood safety in its labelling, many think thatthe two ministries should first unite theircurrently separate regulation systems.

The health ministry also intends torequire more detailed tests on the possible

toxicity and allergenicity of GM organisms.The current guidelines give only a generaloutline of the safety tests. In contrast, theproposed evaluation system gives specificdetails of the assessment procedures.

Mandatory testing of GM productsmeans that the evaluation of new GM foods

would be halted until April 2001. This isexpected to affect the commercialization ofseveral products that have passed safetyevaluation, including DuPont’s soybeansenriched with oleic acid. But it may speed upthe approval of GM products and improvetheir image with the public.

Most Japanese food manufacturers haveabandoned GM ingredients. Majorbreweries, such as Kirin Beer, Suntory andAsahi Beer, have decided to make their beerGM-free. Ajinomoto, Japan’s largest food-additive manufacturer, last week said it wasto stop using GM soybeans in its products.

Kirin Beer has also abandoned itsresearch into GM tomatoes, although thecompany says that it has spent very littlemoney on the project, which usestechnology developed by Calgene, the USagribiotechnology company.

Kirin no longer plans to do research onGM food, although it will continue researchinto other crops. Kagome, which makesprocessed food, says it has no plans tocommercialize its products, but willcontinue its research. But Japan Tobaccohopes to bring to market its GM rice, whichwas approved in 1998. Yoriko Uozum

Keeping it ‘natural’: The Japanese public aregrowing hostile towards GM food.

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