Researchers Show Benefits of Science

Scientists from the Triangle and beyond are showing fairgoers everything from rice that is resistant to fungus to modified sweet potatoes that grow exponentially faster than normal ones.

Betsy Randall-Schadel, chief pathologist at the N.C. Department of Agriculture, is working with a group that is developing a way to grow cotton that already is colored and doesn't require dying.

The process uses traditional techniques and a "gene gun" to crossbreed types of cotton to form boles that are brown or blue.

"It's not as much a gun as it is a box," she said. "What they do is they use high pressure to force genes into the cell."

Fair Manager Wesley Wyatt said the Department of Agriculture's bioengineering exhibit shows how research done at major universities and by independent corporations in the state benefits all North Carolinians, including thousands of displaced textile workers.

"Some companies have already marketed what they're calling 'natural cotton,'" Wyatt said.

He said that when state universities take the first step in developing a bioengineering process in a particular field, N.C. citizens who work in that field benefit.

"What the universities do through their research will hopefully lower the costs of the products and make it cheaper for farmers and producers," Wyatt said.

Wyatt said the department attempted to recruit UNC-CH researchers to broaden the scope of the exhibit.

"When we say 'biotechnology,' we weren't specifically limiting it to agricultural biotechnology," Wyatt said. "We were including medical biotechnology, and that is what talking to UNC-Chapel Hill was about."

But UNC-CH researchers were unresponsive, he said. "We ... never did get an answer."

Heather Overton, public information officer for the agriculture department and the biotechnology exhibit's coordinator, went from person to person at the University and never could get anyone to participate, Wyatt said.

Although Overton said she was disappointed, she also said she realized the fair might be too large an undertaking for University researchers. "We asked several groups at (UNC-CH) to participate," she said. "Colleges are just so busy handling their own needs that they have difficulty committing to an event of this magnitude. The fair does last 10 days."

But Overton said potential controversies could have stopped UNC researchers from participating in the event.

"(Biotechnology does) help the environment in some ways," she said. "However we do understand that it is a controversial subject."

Overton said that because of the exhibit's controversial nature, researchers would present the biotechnology advances as interesting feats of science, not something that necessarily should be widespread.

"Our main goal was to show people biotechnology in North Carolina," she said. "I want people to come to the fair and be able to put their hands on it.

"We don't want to force something on people, we just want them to walk away and form their own impressions."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.