Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, will speak on "Biotechnology: Challenges and Opportunities for Global Agriculture" when he addresses the Cornell Genomics Colloquium on Friday, March 10, at 10 a.m. in the G-10 conference room of the Biotechnology Building on the Cornell University campus.

The talk by Conway, author of the recently released book, The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the 21st Century, is free and open to the public.

Conway is expected to emphasize the need for a global forum to address the potential benefits and risks of biotechnology, according to his university host, Stephen Kresovich, director of the Cornell Institute for Genomic Diversity. It is Conway's personal belief that such a forum is necessary to calm the increasingly passionate and sometimes self-defeating rhetoric that is polarizing the debate in agricultural, says Kresovich, a professor of plant breeding.

In his March 10 talk, Conway will argue that carefully managed biotechnology, employment of sound ecological principles and increased farmer participation in the development of new technologies -- as well as other innovative strategies for dealing with local problems -- are all interdependent issues that need to be addressed holistically.

The Rockefeller Foundation was founded in 1913 to affirm John D. Rockefeller's mandate "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world," and it recently defined its mission for the 21st century "to enrich and sustain the lives and livelihoods of poor and excluded people throughout the world."

At Cornell, the foundation funds research in agricultural biotechnology, including projects to clone, characterize and transfer genes in rice.