Bergman Guest Of Honor At International Safflower Conference

The International Safflower committee honored Dr. Jerry Bergman, longtime safflower breeder and pioneer in developing new safflower varieties used in a wide variety of products, as the guest of honor at the 8th International Safflower Conference held in Hyderabad, India from Jan. 19-23. The conference, held every three to four years, seeks to gather together safflower breeders from around the world to discuss strategies and share new information.

“I didn’t know I was to be the guest of honor until the opening session,” Bergman comments. “It was very unexpected and I was embarrassed by all the attention.”

Bergman, who has worked on developing new and improved safflower varieties and safflower production research for the past 38 years, served as lead speaker and presented a total of three papers during the conference. Safflower acres are currently not increasing world-wide, but Bergman’s opening paper discussed the global strategies to increase both the worldwide production and safflower products and value. “I gave the lead lecture that focused on global strategies for advancing safflower,” Bergman remarks. “I also discussed the vision for safflower and how to double yields over the next decade. We can accomplish this through genetic advances, management practices, and genetic engineering for value added traits. The Centennial variety of safflower that I developed is currently used for genetic transformation and regeneration by private genetic engineering companies, and one new product is a safflower capable of producing on 100,000 acres enough insulin to meet worldwide demand for a one year period.”

He adds, “Safflower is an excellent host species for value added GMO traits. Australian researchers are using genetically engineered safflower to produce unique and specialized industrial oils.”

In the MonDak region, safflower growers do very well with yields, a fact that does not apply to Indian safflower growers. “Alternaria leaf spot is the most important disease limiting safflower world-wide, so controlling this disease is important to expanding safflower production globally,” Bergman says. “In our Northern Great Plains area, with improved varieties for resistance to Alternaria leaf spot and with our available fungicides to control the disease, grower yields have increased by 30% in the past five years. In India, yields are much lower. Indian farmers grow 1.25 million acres of safflower but yields are only one-third of the yield of our northern plains area yields.”

Bergman believes safflower will become increasingly popular as a crop due to its diversity and multiple uses, which include high quality cooking oil low in unsaturated fat, its medicinal possibilities, use in cosmetics, and its potential for value-added proteins such as insulin and novel GMO developed industrial oils. “Safflower will grow in importance world-wide by coupling the traditional bred safflower with genetically engineered value added products,” Bergman predicts. “The crop holds a lot of unexploited potential in all types of farming, from organic to traditional to GMO farming systems. Organic specialty markets exist because of the high quality oil that non-GMO safflower produces as it is higher in monounsaturated fat and much lower in saturated fat than olive oil.”

Although Bergman appreciated the opportunity to attend this conference in India, he was appalled at the standard of living conditions in Hyderabad, which troubled him. ‘I enjoyed the conference and the opportunity to exchange information with the Indian scientists, and I appreciated their great hospitality,” he says. “But seeing how people live in India made me appreciate how well we have it in the USA. Everyone in the USA should visit other less developed countries to get a greater appreciation for our high standard of living here in the United Sates.”

Bergman sits on the international safflower research and development committee which works to promote safflower products and research world-wide.

The 9th International Safflower Conference will be held in Sonora, Mexico in April 2016.