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February 20, 2001

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SHOW: Morning Edition
DATE: February 20, 2001

BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

As scientists continue to develop new medicines produced from cultivated plants, they're creating a market for high-tech crops that might not be grown in a field. One company in Michigan's Upper Peninsula says it has the solution to a problem the biotech industry faces: how to contain or quarantine such crops. The company grows plants underground in an unused copper mine. Peter Payette of Interlochen Public Radio reports.

PETER PAYETTE reporting: The closure of the White Pine Mine in 1995 rocked the economy here in Michigan's northwestern reaches. During its heyday, the Copper Range Company employed 3,000 miners, but today just two men work in this mine. Instead of head lamps, they take sunglasses with them when entering the mine to shield their eyes from the 1,000-watt light bulbs used to cultivate plants underground.

Clete Balbow(ph) is driving a pickup truck deep into the mine on a cold winter morning. Balbow has worked here for more than 30 years, and he explains why the mine's entrance has concrete walls.

Mr. CLETE BALBOW (Employee): This is called The Portal(ph), and it's built such because there is no rock in the area. There's soil, gravel. We had to have something to support the area until you get into the mine, which is right here. And you'll see we're in rock right now.

PAYETTE: Balbow drives for more than a half-mile, taking him 200 feet below the Earth's surface. The truck's headlights illuminate the rock pillars that hold up the ceiling. Anyone entering must not only wear a hard hat, but also carry a device called a Self-Rescuer. In the event of a fire, it would allow a person to breathe for about an hour.

Rounding a corner and in the pitch black ahead, you can start to see the lights of the growth chamber.

Mr. BALBOW: I think you're going to like this. Most people are pretty much amazed.

(Soundbite of truck stopping)

Mr. BALBOW: Here we are.

(Soundbite of truck doors opening)

PAYETTE: It is amazing to step from the cold, dusty mine into the bright, warm chamber, which is the size of a large living room. The walls are painted white. A humming sound comes from the 50 grow lamps that hang at eye level from the ceiling and are on 18 hours a day. The lamps heat the room so well that a fan on the wall blows in cool air from the mine. It turns on and off automatically to keep the room between 78 and 80 degrees at all time.

(Soundbite of lamps being shut off)

PAYETTE: This room was once a workshop with a concrete floor. The plants sit on the floor in black plastic pots and get water through a drip tube. The tallest ones here are tobacco plants that are ready for harvest. The company growing these plants is SubTerra. It has a contract with the Canadian government to grow tobacco that produces a protein being used in cancer research. Other plants are being grown for experimental purposes here, and there are even some flowers being grown for decor. Among some small basil plants stands a birch sapling that is about six feet tall.

SubTerra employee Mark Pierpont says the tree was started from a seed here just last spring.

Mr. MARK PIERPONT (Employee, SubTerra): So that's not even a year old, and it's up to your chin. And if you did that out in the wild, that might be a five- or six-year-old tree.

PAYETTE: A perfectly controlled fast-growing environment is one advantage of growing plants in a mine. The other is genetic containment. These tobacco plants have been genetically modified. By growing them in a mine, there is almost no chance that any pollen or seed could escape into the environment and cross-breed with other plants. The plants are also safe from anyone who might want to destroy them as a protest against genetically modified seeds. If intruders got in, they would almost surely get lost in the 25 square miles of caverns.

SubTerra is a subsidiary of Prairie Plant Systems based in Saskatchewan, Canada. President and co-founder Brent Zettl says the concept is still a little ahead of its time. He thinks companies developing medicines aren't thinking much about where they'll grow their plants, but argues fields and greenhouses don't offer much security.

Mr. BRENT ZETTL (President, Co-founder, Prairie Plant Systems): There's a general sense that somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all plants that are going to be designed to produce medicines are going to be required to have genetic containment.

PAYETTE: But Carole Kramer says that's an optimistic estimate. Kramer is a professor at Virginia Tech and also the chief scientific officer of a biotech firm, where she, too, works with genetically modified tobacco. Kramer says while there may be a significant need for containment, most of the genetic material being produced is harmless.

Professor CAROLE KRAMER (Virginia Tech): Among the many, many products of the different companies I'm aware of, I can't think of too many that would be considered too toxic to go into the environment or to need very extreme containment.

PAYETTE: Catherine Ives agrees. Ives manages a program at Michigan State University that helps developing countries apply biotechnology advancements. But she notes that even though companies might not need the bio security, they might be willing to pay for the extra safety and remarkable growing conditions.

Ms. CATHERINE IVES (Michigan State University): The reason most companies would go to this kind of length is because their product is so valuable that it makes it worth their expense and that they want to maintain a higher level of control over the product.

PAYETTE: SubTerra expects the demand to increase. In White Pine, the company has invested in the infrastructure to handle at least 40 more growth chambers. It knows of no other company working with the concept, but expects to see competition soon in one of the thousands of shuttered, hard-rock mines located throughout North America. For NPR News, I'm Peter Payette in White Pine, Michigan.