Professor Fiona Doohan:

As an example of how the intellectual property would be handled from a project viewpoint, a joint TCD-led UCD collaborative project was looking at the development of new biological control agents. On the basis of that, we patented and developed some technology, and now we have moved from SFI funding to Enterprise Ireland funding to set up a company to develop those new biologicals and indigenous industries. It is joint UCD-TCD intellectual property behind that.

I will now answer some of Deputy McConalogue's questions. On the crossover with other countries, there is quite a lot. We make a very big effort to integrate into other EU projects, particularly in areas which we deem to be very similar to Ireland geographically and climatically, particularly French and UK research, especially western UK research, where the problems faced are similar to those in Ireland.

The profitability of tillage crops is obviously a big problem. One of the downsides, and one of the areas where there is great potential to make inroads, is that we have not necessarily reaped the rewards of all of this technology yet. For example, if a farmer grows two varieties, one disease-resistant and one susceptible, they get the same spray regime. They are not benefiting from the fact that this is very resistant to disease, whereas in animal science that is a very refined economic breeding index model. There is a lot we can do to refine the way we rank and grade different varieties of cereals for farmers. The economics of two varieties should not be the same if they are genetically very different in terms of their disease resistance.

To come to genetic modification; biotechnology includes genetic modification, but it also includes molecular marker technology, which is the technology I talked about. Molecular marker technology is where there is a test for a piece of DNA that is naturally present in wheat. One variety of wheat might be resistant to disease, another might be susceptible. One may have very poor yield, another may have high yield.

If one can figure out what genes control those traits, one can have DNA, biotechnological, tests for those genes, and then all the new plants that are being produced can be tested much more quickly using that technology. That is distinct from genetic modification, GM. It is an economic question, a marketing question at a national level - should Ireland be GM free, as it now? I think in many cases that makes sense; whether one agrees with GM is a different issue. For me it is a grey area. It is like asking if everyone is good at driving a car; I do not think they all are. The answer to the questiion varies, depending on the actual GM line, as it is called. For me, that is very variable.

In terms of biological treatments, I really like and welcome the comments from Deputy Corcoran Kennedy. Yes, we can learn a lot from nature. In fact, in developing the new biological agents that, led by Trinity, we developed, we went to nature and we asked: "Why are there wild relatives of cereals that grow very happily on the side of the field - even though it's very dry, or very wet, or there are very high disease levels - standing up happy as Larry while the other crops, if they had not had all the inputs, would fall down?" We realised that in those crops, there is a lot of nature that has been bred out because of intensive agriculture. We can go back to nature to learn a lot and there is a lot more that we can learn there.

Regarding crop margins and alternative crop borders surrounding the crops, much research has been done on that at EU level and it shows that it can be profitable. It is not there yet but there are a lot of improvements and it can be done. One could even ask whether a farmer growing tillage for animal feed should really be growing one variety. They should be growing a mixture of varieties; one variety is resistant to this disease, one to that, so there is balancing to be done. It is a trade-off.

A question was asked about how we can counteract the depletion of soil nutrients. That can only be achieved by taking a sustainable approach, so that we are looking at reinvesting in the soil. In fact, soil is probably one of the most undervalued national resources, and there is a lot more that can be done. There is very good research done in Ireland, but there is a lot more that can be done in order to analyse the microbiome, the invertebrates, and all the different biota and minerals that exist in soil. That is a complex thing. We are certainly going to run out of fertilisers if the world continues as it is, and we need a more sustainable alternative.

Regarding high-protein plants, research is ongoing in different institutions in Ireland on high-protein plants. I would say that it is in its infancy, but there are some promising results. However, I think a lot more has to be done and we may need to think outside the box. For example, if sugarbeet was brought back, one could say "I am not feeding sugarbeet directly to animals, but I am using it to produce fungal protein and I am feeding that to animals", because it is very easy to cultivate fungi on sugarbeet. There are lots of innovative solutions that can be investigated to see if they are feasible.

On the question on limited crop breeding, we work with industry, which breeds varieties not solely for Ireland as the market is not big enough. Potato breeding in Teagasc, which also does a lot of collaborative research with industry into grass-breeding, is the exception There are no dedicated cereal-breeding industries in Ireland because of the scale of cereal production here. That is not going to change in the short term. The smartest solution is that we work with the big industries, which have big banks of what is called germplasm in lots of different varieties, and we ensure that they tailor varieties that are suited to Ireland. However, there are so many different micro-climates in Ireland that there is not a single solution for even three farmers. Three adjacent farms might have very different micro-climates, and that is where the smart technologies will come in to tell us how we can be much more selective, even at a very regional level.