For centuries, farmers and plant breeders selectively bred plants that were the largest, strongest and least susceptible to disease. They did not know it, but they were practicing a rudimentary form of genetic engineering – the removal, modification or addition of genes to a living organism. Genetic engineering is a fundamental process used in biotechnology, which enables researchers to develop improved crop plants, such as crops naturally protected from diseases and insects.
“Crop biotechnology is perhaps one of the most precise forms of plant breeding that we could ever imagine,” says renowned plant pathologist Dr. Roger Beachy, the founding president of the not-for-profit Donald Danforth Plant Science Center where more than 200 scientists are working to increase understanding of basic plant biology to benefit human nutrition and health and to improve the sustainability of agriculture worldwide.
“We are basic scientists that discover what genes do and how they give function to a plant – how they give it drought tolerance or disease resistance or more vitamins. And, then implant the genetic information through biotechnology to give them the new instructions,” says Dr. Beachy, who pioneered the development of virus-resistance in plants, leading to the development of the world’s first genetically engineered food crop. “So the more we learn about how plants take up minerals and how they deposit them, the more we’ll be able to use that information and the genetics to improve crops.”
Researchers developed the first commercial application of genetic engineering in 1982 when they produced human insulin for the treatment of diabetes. However, the first genetically engineered plants were not commercially grown until 1996. Last year alone, more than 10.3 million farmers across 22 countries grew more than 252 million acres (102 million hectares) of genetically engineered soybeans, corn, canola and cotton.
“What’s been amazing to many of us is that we’ve seen advances that even were beyond our wildest expectations,” comments Beachy. “We all knew it was theoretically possible, but to actually do it and deploy it into the field. And then, at the end of four or five years, report that this has an advantage of increasing yields and reduce the use of agriculture chemicals by 50 million pounds a year. It’s an astounding number.”
A PG Economics study on the cumulative global impacts of genetically engineered plants for the first nine years of production (1996-2004) shows a decrease in pesticide applications of 72,000 metric tons, a US$27 billion increase in net income for farmers, a savings of 1.8 billion liters of diesel fuel from reduced tillage or plowing, and a subsequent elimination of 10 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions through fuel savings.
“When we have that kind of breakthrough from the first 10 years of a scientific field, one can expect much more in the future,” comments Beachy on the potential benefits of research on genetically engineered plants in more than 60 countries across nearly as many crops. “We’ll have plants that survive drought. We’ll have plants that have more nutrition. And, we’ll have plants that have new uses and be able to benefit the farming community, the economics of farming, as well as environment.
“I’d love to see a potato that has more protein or more vitamins in it, so those whose diets are built more around potatoes can have a healthier living,” continues Beachy. “We’d like to see those increased by genetic approaches, and help to feed people better while helping them to feed themselves.”
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