Plane crash victims led GM research

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

Friday night's plane crash has wiped out most of the executive team of New Zealand's only organisation known to be planning field trials of genetically modified plants.

Crop and Food Research is about to apply to the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) for a permit to do field trials in Canterbury of onions that have been genetically modified to survive the weedkiller Roundup.

The application will be the first since the law was changed last year, and is expected to be followed by applications for commercial release of genetically modified (GM) potatoes and other crops after the moratorium on GM products ends in October.

The president of the Royal Society of New Zealand and chief executive of Genesis, Dr Jim Watson, said Crop and Food was probably the country's most advanced plant GM group.

"They were very vocal and to the forefront of the debate on GM science and what we need to do in terms of our plant business to make it grow," he said.

"To have their leaders taken out is just tragic. It is a loss to the country and the science community."

The crash killed four of the institute's top seven managers: its research manager, Dr Desma Hogg; strategy manager Katherine Carman, a highly regarded science strategist who was poached from Britain's Ministry of Agriculture; marketing manager Alistair Clough and human resources manager Margaret Viles.

The others killed were communications manager Howard Bezar and business managers Andy Rosanowski and Richard Finch.

No actual researchers were on the aircraft, and chief executive Paul Tocker said the onion application would go ahead as planned.

"From a scientific perspective, we have retained our core capability," he said.

"But these people, as part of the key management business team, were involved in the fundamental thinking and the strategy of developing new science, both scientific capability and obviously interfacing between our science engine and our commercial science. That is the area we will have to rebuild."

Life Sciences Network director Francis Wevers said the crash would have "a dramatic impact on the commercialisation of New Zealand science out of that institute".

"Scientific capability is very good in this country. It's the nexus between scientific capability and commercial nous and entrepreneurship that is part of what is being stripped out here," he said.

Mr Tocker said the institute's 300 staff were "an extended family" and would need "a grieving process" to recover from the tragedy.

"It's going to put a lot more onus on those of us who are left," he said.

He said the "tremendous depth" in the institute was shown over the weekend.

"The people we have left in the company, who are still closely related to the ones that we have lost, have just shown tremendous capability in putting together the sort of reassembly of our organisation," he said.

He plans to appoint "caretakers" to take over the roles of the dead managers today.

The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, which supplies the main state funding to the institute, has appointed a team led by its chief executive Gowan Pickering to help Crop and Food rebuild.

The Association of Crown Research Institutes, which Mr Tocker chairs, has also offered to share staff and provide practical support.

Foundation for Research, Science and Technology chairman Neil Richardson said in the country had lost some of its leading science managers.

His staff dealt with the people from Crop and Food on every day and were shocked by the tragedy, he said. They would do everything they could to help Crop and Food maintain its science programmes and to rebuild its science leadership.

A Crop and Food scientist, who did not want to be named, said he felt trepidation about going to work tomorrow.

"It's going to be very sad - there's going to be a lot of people missing."

The senior managers who died were not remote from the rest of the staff, but joined them for morning and afternoon teas.

"They were always very accessible and not in their ivory towers."

Award-winning Crop and Food scientist Dr Margy Gilpin, whose genetically modified potato experiment was damaged by anti-GM protesters last year, said staff were devastated by the tragedy.

"We all had something to do with them [the staff who died]. It is going to be a hard week."

Dr Gilpin said the loss of the senior staff would be a setback.

"The institute was going in a good direction. Business-wise it was going well and the overall feeling was positive. There was a good feeling about our management and now we have to start again."

additional reporting: NZPA