Ren Wang IFPRI-FAO conference, "Accelerating the End of Hunger and Malnutrition" November 28–30, 2018 Bangkok, Thailand

1. Unlocking the potential of agricultural innovations
to achieve the SDGs
Ren Wang
Member of the Board of Directors and Senior Vice President, BGI, Shenzhen

2. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization Was
Established In 1945
• The original mandate of FAO
was simple and straight
forward: To increase the
world’s food production and
achieve food security.
• The World Food Summit in
1996, attended by 186 heads
of state and ministers
restated the FAO mission
and committed to world’s
food security;
2

3. Numbers of Hunger And Malnutrition Are On The Rise !
The number of hungry people in the world has risen to 821
million in 2017, from around 804 million in 2016 (FAO, 2018)
2 billion people are under micronutrient deficiencies
Obesity affects over 500 million adults

4. The World has changed,
So have FAO and CGIAR
Some old challenges persisted;
Many are new and unprecedented
4
Global Climate Change: Can
Agriculture Cope?

5. Today, 75% of the world’s food is produced from only 12 plants and five animal
species, while there are about 300,000 edible plant species in the world.
These plant diversity will be the source of food security and nutrition for the world
population today and the generations beyond.

6. Zoonotic diseases as emerging pandemic threats
Seven out of every ten newly discovered human diseases are of animal
origin

7. Challenges of urbanization on food systems
2/3 of the people will be city
dwellers by 2050
New “Urban Agenda” and
“Resilient Cities” need to
include sustainable food
systems for the cities
Every year, China has 220-250
million people migrate from rural
to urban areas - equal to the
current population of Indonesia

8. Innovation has been proven to be a driver of such change, and for
economic growth of countries.
Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or
organisations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of
organisation into use for the first time in a specific context in order
to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or
environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security
and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural
resource management. (FAO 2018)
Today’s food and agriculture need a transformative change !

9. Key Messages from the FAO Symposium on Agricultural
Innovation for Family Farmers, 21-23 Nov 2018, Rome
1. Putting family farmers at the center of innovation;
2. The Importance of bridging institutions to facilitate networking and multi-
stakeholder dialogue;
3. A need for increased investment in public research and education systems;
4. A holistic approach and integrated policies to create an enabling environment;
5. Youth and women are the central force for agricultural innovation;
6. Urgent need for investment from the government and other stakeholders in
training to develop next generation of innovators;
7. A need to enable family farmers to adapt and innovate in the use of new
technologies and solutions.

10. Genomic technology contributes to reducing health-related rural poverty in China
- The cases of prevention and control of echinococcosis and thalassemia
• Detect at early stage
• Low false positive
• Cover the large population
NGS screening
serum + ultrasound screening
• Next Generation Sequencing method can detect more
variants than traditional kit
• NGS method can improve HLA typing accuracy
Data: Blue book of thalassemia in China
https://presse.inserm.fr/en/new-gene-therapy-success-in-beta-thalassemia-22-patients-treated-in-france-united-states-thailand-and-australia/31149/

11. Sangji -- a 15 years old girl in Qinghai died from echinococcosis (hydatidosis)
Data: http://tieba.baidu.com/p/4317878206 http://www.dari.gov.cn/html/535/63629.html China Statistical Yearbook 2017

12. Echinococcosis is one of the 17 neglected tropical diseases raised by WHO
Global distribution of cystic echinococcosis 2011
Data: http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/zoonoses/infections_more/en/
• Two types: cystic and alveolar echinococcosis
• Clinical symptom may appear after many years of infection
• Serious morbidity and death
In 2016, the incident rate in Tibet is 1.6%,
around 50,000 people. There were
around 50 million livestock affected,
which costed 4323 million dollar
economic loss.

13. Xiaoyu -- a β-thalassemia major baby
Data: http://mb.yidianzixun.com/article/0JzqsEJ3 China Statistical Yearbook 2017
Per Capita Disposable
Income of Rural
Households by
Region(2016)
>20,000 RMB
1,5000-20,000RMB
10,000-15,000RMB
<10,000RMB
No data

14. Thalassemia is the most common genetic disease in
Southern China
A common cause of rural poverty
Thalassemia is prevalent in Mediterranean region
and Southeast Asia. There are around 350 million
thalassemia gene carrier world wide.
In China
Thalassemia gene carrier: 30 million
Thalassemia major: 15,000
Thalassemia gene carrier rate of TOP 2 province :
Guangxi (23.98%)
Guangdong(16.8%)
Data: Blue book of thalassemia in China

15. A huge financial burden for the patient families
Thalassemia treatment is not covered by medical insurance
Data: Blue book of thalassemia in China
Thalassemia Gene Carrier
Thalassemia Intermedia
¼thalassemia patient
thalassemia
gene carrier
$692,000 for 50 yrs $58,000 for a transplant surgery

16. Shenzhen Changsha
Number of Birth in
2017
240,000 105,000
Financing mechanism Included in maternity insurance
Funded and coordinated by local
government
Subsidy Government subsidy $43/case +
maternity insurance $80/case
Government subsidy $130/case
Start Time 7/2017 4/2018
Initial Coverage 56% 30%
YTD coverage 95% 80%
Data Report Data collected from different hospitals’
systems
Data and report generated from an exclusive
information system
Different Models of Financing and Managing Genetic Screening/Testing
Projects in Shenzhen vs. Changsha

17. NIFTY (NIPT)
3.49M
HPV
3.24M
Hearing Impairment
1.99M
Newborn Screening
0.80M
Thalassemia
263K+
Monogenic Disorder
52K+
Chromosome Abnormality
34K+
PGD/PGS
12K+
Tumor Detection
43K+
Infection Detection
23K+
Echinococcosis
Screening
850K+
WGS
171K+
WES
154K+
Others
2M
Up to Sep. 2018
BGI has conducted ca. 13,000,000 genomic tests worldwide

18. Government of China sets the target of lifting a further 30
million people out of poverty in the next three years
Data: http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2018-08/19/content_5314959.htm http://www.jkb.com.cn/news/industryNews/2017/0422/408363.html
Health-related poverty accounts for 42.6% in China’s national poverty population
Strategies for reducing health-related poverty:
• Build remote medical service network
• Implement precision medicine strategies for diagnosis and treatment
• Implement integrated approaches for for endemic and serious infectious diseases
• Provide full insurance coverage for breast and cervical cancer screening for rural
women
• Start new born screening and child nutrition improvement project

19. 1990年-1998 1998年-2007 2007-2015
electrophoresis
98 00 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 2090 92 94 96
Cost: $3 B/Genome
Human Genome Project
was officially announced
in 1990 by U.S.
Achieve coverage of at
least 90% of Genome
in working draft by 2000
capillary electrophoresis Domestically designed & made
$600/Genome
China National Genebank
2016－
Year
$300M/ Genome
sequencing by synthesis
$3M～4K/Genome
Scientific discovery stage
Factory of Sequencing platform for genome reading, writing
and conservation
Costpergenome
Perceiving Life : From Human Genome Project
© 2018 BGI Rights Reserv
2018－
$100/Genome

20. • Maximum data throughput: 6 Tera
bites
• Can complete 60 human WGS per day
• Can complete 10,000 human genomes
in 6 months
BGI launched the world’s fastest genome sequencer MGISEQ T7

21. Technological Innovations are changing the world,
and our mindset must also change.
Innovation in science and technology must be
accompanied by innovative business models and
broad partnerships, especially the PPP to achieve
impact at a scale.
Innovation can be a powerful driver for poverty
reduction and economic development in the
developing countries; but it needs the support and
enabling policies and investment from the national
as well as local governments.
Some take home messages

22. 2018/11/29 22
Thank You!
From tradition to the Future …