Should the figurative "three-legged stool" of the land-grant university mission -- teaching, research and extension -- add a fourth leg, economic development?

This question, among others, was explored by more than 150 agricultural biotechnology specialists from seven countries at the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council's (NABC) 18th annual meeting at Cornell University, June 12-14. The theme was Agricultural Biotechnology: Economic Development Through New Products, Partnerships and Workforce Development.

As land-grant universities search out new ways to fulfill their mission to work for the public good, they are increasingly using modern science and biotechnology, not only to provide new products and jobs, but also to economically develop communities and regions, said Tony Shelton, professor of entomology at Cornell and the meeting chair.

Participants explored the role of land-grant universities in local economic development through such university research parks as the Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park (CAFTP), which recently opened adjacent to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) in Geneva. Various speakers involved in developing similar parks in such diverse places as Saskatchewan and China shared success stories.

After touring the CAFTP, participants noted its flexible design, which is capable of fostering a variety of start-up companies. Largely a community-driven project, the technology park has been successful, participants agreed, because of participation from local stakeholders and its close proximity to NYSAES, which allows experiment station researchers to easily feed CAFTP's technology pipeline. Participants recommended that CAFTP draw specifically on the strengths of the Finger Lakes region by striving, for example, to be a center of excellence in food technology, from which new tenants could be drawn.

In a final session, speakers discussed the hurdles in bringing agricultural biotechnology products from the laboratory to the marketplace -- a process that increasingly grows out of private-public partnerships and the success of academics as entrepreneurs.

In a reference to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's recent book, "The World Is Flat," Steven Slack, director of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center at Ohio State University and this year's NABC chair, noted: "The conference presentations and discussions essentially explored the world- flattening process in biotechnology commercialization and explored strategies to enable entities, principally universities, to compete in this environment."

Presenters included Cornell faculty members Milton Zaitlin and James Hunter, professors emeriti in plant pathology; Susan Riha, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences; and Molly Jahn, professor of plant breeding and genetics.

The NABC executive offices are located at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research on the Cornell campus.