Introduction and Overview

In the early 21st century, the science of agriculture has started to shift gears, just as it did 100 years ago. At the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the pure-line theory of Wilhelm Johannsen, and the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's laws of heredity contributed to the rise of plant breeding, while Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease and the development of vaccines opened up lines of research in the veterinary sciences. The next epoch in agricultural technology will also have fundamental biological science at its foundation. Today, scientists armed with new molecular biologies involving genomics, proteomics, recombinant DNA, and supporting informatics technologies are delving deeper into the genetics of life, with potentially profound and pervasive implications for agriculture worldwide. The context in which that science will take place has evolved and shifted as well. The public purpose in agricultural R&D is less focused and more closely scrutinized than it was a century ago; the general public seems less trusting of some areas of science, and perhaps of some scientists (National Science Board 2002); and marked changes are taking place in the intellectual property regimes relating to the genetic resources used in agriculture and the technologies used to transform them (Boettiger et al. 2004; Pardey, Koo, and Nottenburg 2004). Complacency has crept in too. Some question the need for continued public funding at recent levels, suggesting that the world's food problems are being solved or constrained by things other than R&D, or that the private sector will do the job (see Runge et al. 2003). Others see a scientific apartheid taking shape, with large parts of the developing world being left behind or denied the prospects science has to offer for growth, development, and prosperity (Serageldin 2001).