I and my colleagues have long been involved in the GM of fruit as government scientists at HRI, East Malling. I personally have some very good GM fruit stories to tell and these are summarised in the attached file (1.0MB) which is an illustrated version of the lecture I gave two years ago at the British Association at Imperial College. Can you make sure that this valuable illustrated information is available on your web site for the general public. The file is more than 400kB because of illustrations.

The GM story for us is indeed bitter -sweet. Everything we have tried has worked - we have fruit that stores longer, fruit that does not need spraying to control tree size and the first ever reported Botrytis resistant strawberries (glasshouse trials). Despite these successes BBSRC and DEFRA funding has all but disappeared despite giving frequent displays of our work to these sponsors. My transgenic fruit material is now undergoing trials in the USA under the safe stewardship of two different Universities and the good sense of the American people. In truth we have exported the technology to the USA and the UK taxpayer will eventually end up paying for the technology twice. Once to do the research work here and second to pay for the import of fruit genetically improved with our original technology from the USA, South America and China!

Professor David J James
Horticulture Research International

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