Leading biotechnologist Professor James Dale AC has been searching for an answer to one of the most important public health problems in the world.

For many of us, a banana is just a healthy snack. But for millions of people around the world, it’s their main source of sustenance. There are more than 500 types of bananas, and in places like East Africa, it’s the green starchy varieties that are used for carbohydrates in most meals. However, the lack of nutrients in these bananas – particularly vitamin A – results in the death of up to 700,000 children under five every year, with another 300,000 going permanently blind.

“When you go to developing countries, there are very high levels of micronutrient deficiencies. Together, they are around the third or fourth most important public health problem in the world, but it’s often known as the ‘hidden hunger’,” says James Dale (OC 1967), who is now one of Australia’s leading biotechnologists.

James leads the Banana Biotechnology Program at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and has dedicated much of his career to trying to solve this problem of micronutrient deficiencies, with a focus on Uganda where the average person eats about a kilogram of bananas every day. He has developed groundbreaking gene technology that improves the crops by adding in the essential missing nutrients such as pro-vitamin A.

While supplements and other forms of food fortification can be effective in some situations, they require ongoing funding and often don’t reach the poorest people. What makes these new genetically edited or genetically-modified plants so significant is that they will be able to be grown by anyone – even in their own backyard.

The project started in 2005, with James and his team developing the technology and doing field trials in Australia, before transferring the technology (but not the plants) to Uganda. He then worked with a local African team to do field trials there, which are about to finish and, once there’s regulatory approval, the first farmers should get these improved bananas in about a year’s time.

Professor James Dale AC at his property on the Brisbane River.

“Clinical vitamin A deficiency is running at between 15 and 30 per cent of kids under 5,” James says. “So, if we can get the farmers to grow them – and there’s every indication they will – my gut feeling is that within a decade, we’ll be able to reduce that level of vitamin A deficiency by at least 50 per cent.”

It will be an incredible achievement, saving millions of lives, and the main reason all the research has been possible is because James Dale’s project was chosen for funding support by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. James even had the opportunity to meet Bill and Melinda when they visited a field trial in 2011.

“It was surreal,” James says. “They were amazing and Bill just kept asking question after question, saying ‘James, I don’t understand this, explain this to me’, and Melinda was very interested about the social aspects and the way bananas are grown and the role of women, who do most of the work.”

Over the years, James has been honoured many times for his scientific and humanitarian endeavours. In 2004, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia and, this year, was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 2008, he was appointed as QUT’s second Distinguished Professor, and he was Queensland’s Senior Australian of the Year in 2019. James started his education at St Marks when he was three years old and spent his whole school life at Cranbrook, where he tells interviewer Michael Turtle (OC 1998) he didn’t “rise to any heights”, never top of the class, a prefect, or a star on field.

“Invariably my report cards said, ‘he could do better if he tried harder’ and my response was always, ‘if I haven’t tried harder, how do they know?’,” James jokes… and then, with a big laugh, adds, “but it seems they may have been correct!”

Bill Gates just kept asking question after question, saying ‘James, I don’t understand this, explain this to me’.

James Dale AC

Still, it was a very enjoyable 14 years at Cranbrook and James credits his biology teacher, Dan Massie, in particular for helping set him on this path. “There are so many fabulous things to do in the world. If you put your mind to it, you can really make a contribution,” James says. “I think I’ve still got some of the biggest things to come, and I’m 71!”

With global population growth and climate change placing huge pressure on food security over the coming years, the work James Dale is doing will only become more important. (“The estimate is that between now and 2050, we have to produce the same amount of food as we’ve produced in all of history,” he notes.) So keep an eye out for James’s next projects. Maybe he’s right, the biggest things could still be to come!

FRIENDS FOR LIFE
“I remember James Dale, “Harry” as he was known to his friends, as a good-hearted, easy- going, young fellow, who laughed a lot. His scientific genius emerged later and one could not but fail to be impressed by his energy and enterprise. So good to see his work acknowledged at both a state and national level.”
Sir David Fowke Bt (OC 1967)

“Before the end of year exams in 1959, when we were both about 10, I went out on exeat one Sunday to the Dale’s house. I noticed that James was copying out in long-hand an entire chapter of a history book. He told me that he found it the best way to learn history. I have
never forgotten this example of dogged perseverance and patience.
Andrew Pfeiffer (OC 1967)