Making the World Safe for Sweet Potatoes : Agriculture: French scientists are teaming up with Scripps researchers to breed disease-resistant crops for developing countries.

In an effort to increase the world’s food supply, scientists from a French public research institute will join San Diego researchers as they try to breed disease-resistant crops for developing nations, officials announced Wednesday.

Within five years, a team of scientists at Scripps Research Institute hope to genetically engineer disease-resistant rice, cassava and sweet potatoes--crops commonly grown and often ravaged by poor agricultural conditions in Third World countries.

Officials with the Institut Francais de Recherche Scientifique signed a five-year, $3-million agreement to set up a research laboratory at the La Jolla facility and pay the salaries of five institute scientists who will move to San Diego to collaborate with Scripps researchers.

The agreement marks the first U.S. endeavor for the French group, which has research teams in more than 50 countries. Worldwide, 800 of the French institute’s scientists and more than 2,000 employees devote themselves to making discoveries that would aid poorer nations.

At Scripps, the scientists will focus on breeding plants that are resistant to viruses, fungi and bacteria. They also hope to improve the nutritional value of plants and to design strains that can tolerate salt and drought.

Scientists welcomed news of the international collaboration, saying it could eventually help ease world hunger and produce a safer crop by reducing farmers’ dependence on potentially harmful pesticides.

“If biotechnology or molecular technology techniques can be used for worldwide food products, then it will go a long way to increasing the world food supply,” said Doug Gubler, a plant pathologist with the University of California, Davis. “Because of pesticide issues, disease-resistant plants are a natural direction to go.”

Under the agreement, officials will set up a laboratory, called the International Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology, or ILTAB. There, about 20 scientists will conduct research and provide training for researchers from developing nations.

In California, farmers lose no more than 5% of their rice crop to viruses in an average year, said Roger N. Beachy, head of Scripps’ Division of Plant Biology and co-director of the new laboratory. But, in India and across Asia, the losses can be as much as 60%. Some parts of Africa fare even worse, losing as much as 80%.

For years, industry has assigned its scientists to study methods of improving lucrative crops such as bananas, tomatoes and blueberries. But less profitable crops such as rice, which are the mainstay of poor nations, have attracted less interest.

“We began work saying, ‘What crops are important in developing countries?’ ” Beachy said. “Clearly, these techniques will be used for a lot of crops such as citrus and bananas, but commercial interests will take care of those because there’s money to be made.”

Beachy and his team will instead work with rice, sweet potatoes and cassava plants, whose edible, starchy roots are sometimes used to make bread and tapioca. Because Scripps has not yet opened its own greenhouse, Beachy will begin his work later this month in a rented UC San Diego greenhouse, where researchers will grow hundreds of different plants that will be genetically engineered each week.

Beachy, who joined Scripps last month, will co-direct the efforts with the French institute’s Claude Fauquet, a plant virologist who worked 14 years in West Africa.

Beachy predicted that, within two years, the team will have genetically engineered rice plants that are resistant to one or more viruses.

“We are close to that now,” he said. “Until now, it’s been all test tube science, and now we are ready for plant science.”

In two to three years, he predicted, the scientists will be able to breed a cassava plant. And, within five years, he said, the various plants will have been tested and the technology shared with scientists in Africa and Asia.