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Frequently Asked
Questions
- How does biotechnology
address current human
&
environmental
challenges?
Although biotechnology
on its own does not have
the capacity to meet the
major challenges of the
new Millennium, it is a
powerful tool for
providing innovative
solutions to a wide
range of human and
environmental issues.
The use of biotechnology
in agriculture can help:
Provide enough food
for everyone
More than 1 billion
people are still
chronically
under-nourished, and the
world population is set
to rise by a further 2.3
billion by mid-century.
One of the Millennium
Development Goals
commits the 189 UN
member countries to
halve hunger between
1990 and 2015. To
achieve this will
require a substantial
increase (70-100%) in
global grain production.
In order to increase
crop yields and to
expand cultivated areas
as necessary, greater
resistance to
environmental stresses -
including pathogens,
drought and salinity -
is essential.
In the current
generation of crop
biotechnology
applications, certain
pests can be very
efficiently controlled
by plants expressing
Bt proteins, and
more than a decade of
use has shown
substantial yield
increases for maize and
cotton. Tolerance to
abiotic stress like
drought or salinity is
controlled by a more
complex network of
genes, but promising
results have been
achieved in model plants
and are now being
replicated in important
food crops such as
maize, wheat and rice
under field conditions.
In the case of drought
tolerant maize, the
first examples are
currently being assessed
by the US regulatory
authorities. As well as
stress tolerance,
genetic modification is
also proving successful
in enhancing basic
cellular processes to
improve biomass
production and plant
architecture, previously
considered too difficult
to achieve. There is
growing evidence that
single gene
modifications may lead
to enhanced carbon
fixation and
partitioning into
harvestable plant
products.
If we are to have
consistently larger
harvests to feed a
growing world
population, plants must
have both an increased
yield potential and be
protected from pests,
diseases and
environmental stresses
sufficiently for
increased yields to be
realised in practice.
Already, crop
biotechnology is making
a real contribution to
these areas, and the
potential for further
improvements is
significantly higher
than more conventional
technologies could
provide.
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Provide healthy food
Besides providing
calories, our food must
also supply essential
micro-nutrients like
vitamins and minerals,
offer an appropriate
balance between
carbohydrates, proteins
and fats, and ideally be
free of allergens and
other anti-nutritional
compounds. Crop
biotechnology can
contribute to all areas.
A healthy diet needs to:
-
provide all essential
nutrients (minerals,
vitamins, essential
amino acids and fatty
acids, etc) in a
bio-available form,
-
be
free from toxic,
allergenic or
anti-nutritional
compounds (although in
practice most food
allergies are
associated with staple
foods such as cereals,
nuts and dairy
products) and
-
promote health by
helping the body to
defend itself against
diseases and
environmental
stresses.
In developing countries,
many millions of people
have inadequate diets,
often due to staple
foods low in
micro-nutrients (e.g.
rice), or containing
anti-nutritional factors
(like cyanogenic
cassava). In industrial
countries, people look
for both convenience and
good nutrition in the
foods they eat, although
an increasing number
consume too many
calories, leading to
obesity and further
health problems. GM
technology has numerous
applications which can
help to address these
issues, a few of them
being on the market but
many others being at the
‘proof-of-concept’
stage, with encouraging
results.
Examples include:
·
Golden rice
- This technology
enriches rice grains in
beta-carotene, the
precursor of vitamin A,
the deficiency of which
causes dramatic health
problems in poor
countries, including
blindness, morbidity and
child mortality.
·
Bio-fortification - This
addresses malnutrition
by increasing the
concentrations of
essential minerals,
especially iron and
zinc, in the edible
portions of crops. GM
can also be used to
eliminate
anti-nutrients, like
phytic acid, which
sequesters minerals and
makes them unavailable
for digestion.
·
Heart-healthy
oils - Soybean has been
genetically modified to
produce an oil with an
increased ratio of
monounsaturated/polyunsaturated
fatty acids. This avoids
the need for chemical
hydrogenation of the oil
before using it in
processed food and
overcomes the associated
drawbacks regarding
human health (increase
in blood cholesterol).
Other varieties have
been modified to express
high levels of omega-3
fatty acids, normally
only available in
significant quantities
from oily fish or food
supplements.
·
Increasing the
content of essential
amino acids - Maize
grains are naturally
deficient in lysine, an
essential amino acid for
animal diets, and
genetic modification has
been used to correct
this. This innovation is
dedicated to livestock
feed but is a
‘proof-of-concept’ that
re-balancing foodstuffs
in essential amino acids
is feasible via
biotechnology.
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Preserve water
resources
Agriculture consumes 70%
of total freshwater
reserves, a renewable
but finite resource.
Once, water shortages
were rarely associated
with northern European
climates. Today however,
DG Agriculture’s report
entitled “Adaption to
Climate Change: the
Challenge for European
Agriculture and Rural
Areas” clearly outlines
concerns for the future.
Published in April 2009,
the document outlines
that high water stress
areas are expected to
increase from 19% today
to 35% by 2070 implying
“significant changes in
the quality and
availability of water
resources”.
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/145&format=
HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
.
This is contextualised
by the information that
more than 80% of EU
farmland is currently
rain-fed.
Among the challenging
objectives of
sustainable development,
bigger harvests need to
be produced while less
water is consumed. This
is what scientists call
increasing ‘water use
efficiency’ (WUE) and
intensive research is
dedicated to
identification of the
genes controlling the
trait in model and crop
species and manipulation
to reduce water needs.
There has already been
some success, via both
conventional or
molecular
marker-assisted
breeding, and r-DNA
technology. Here are
some examples of GM
applications currently
in development:
Using water efficiency
-
Plants control both
water transpiration to
the atmosphere and
carbon dioxide uptake
from the atmosphere
via the same openings
in the leaves, called
stomata. The control
of stomata density and
opening is critical to
WUE and some of the
key genes involved
have been isolated and
manipulated to
increase the ratio of
biomass produced to
the amount of water
transpired.
Controlling carbon
dioxide
-
Carbon dioxide
fixation by
photosynthesis follows
different pathways,
with different water
use efficiencies. The
conversion of less
efficient (C3) crops
to more efficient (C4)
ones by shifting their
photosynthetic type
was once considered
impossible, but is now
being actively pursued
by a rice research
consortium under the
umbrella of the
International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI)
in the Philippines. C4
crops have the added
advantage of having
higher yield
potential.
Protecting soil water
-
Water released from
fields to the
atmosphere is the sum
of the water
transpired by the
plants and of the
water directly
evaporated by the
soil. It is important
to maximize the first
portion and to
minimize the second,
and this ratio depends
on the way plants
colonize the soil with
their roots and cover
the soil with their
leaves. Genes
controlling root and
leaf growth and
architecture are being
isolated and
functionally tested in
model and crop plants,
providing increased
yields with limited
water loss from the
soil. The current use
of herbicide-tolerant
crops as an essential
component of no-till
farming also helps to
reduce water loss from
the soil.
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Reduce soil erosion
Weed control is
essential for crop
productivity. Mechanical
cultivation, or tillage,
aims to kill weeds by
disturbing their roots
and burying them before
sowing, but ploughing
has disadvantages. It
makes the soil
susceptible to erosion
and increases carbon
loss to the atmosphere,
depleting the organic
matter which is
important for protecting
and maintaining the
fertility of soil.
Reduced tillage is only
feasible when efficient
alternative weed control
strategies are
available. GM
herbicide-tolerance is
an ideal trait to
encourage reduced
tillage, as a
cost-effective,
labour-saving and
environmentally-friendly
strategy. The technology
has been adopted by
farmers with an
unprecedented rapidity
since the mid-1990s. For
soybean, the no-till
area has nearly doubled
in the US and a 5-fold
increase was recorded in
Argentina, with Roundup
Ready® varieties
estimated to account for
95% of the no-till
soybean area. Besides
soil preservation,
no-tillage agriculture
reduces use of fossil
fuels, saving the farmer
money and reducing the
environmental impact of
intensive farming.
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Protect biodiversity
Biodiversity is a term
covering the variety and
extent of all forms of
life, including
microbes, plants and
animals, and varies from
area to area. The mix of
species is different on
farmland than in the
wild, and specific crops
and the way they are
managed can have a big
influence on this. The
use of GM crops is just
another variable among
many, and there is no
simple general
relationship between
GMOs and farmland
biodiversity.
In an attempt to study
the impact of
herbicide-tolerant crops
on biodiversity in a
controlled way, a team
of scientists conducted
on-farm studies in the
U.K, monitoring
biodiversity within GM
and non-GM fields of
maize, sugar beet and
oilseed rape, including
field margins, over
several years. The main
conclusion was that each
combination of GM crop
with its environment is
a special case that
behaves in its own way
and that GMOs can not be
viewed globally as
either decreasing or
increasing biodiversity
in the agricultural
systems studied. The
different crops (i.e.
the difference between a
crop (whether GM or
otherwise) of oilseed
rape and a maize or
sugar beet crop)
themselves had the
biggest influence on
biodiversity.
However, plant
biotechnology provides
opportunities to
conserve biodiversity:
-
Some GM crops resist
insect attack by
producing a natural
insecticide, the
so-called Bt
protein (derived from
a soil bacterium
itself used as a
pesticide in organic
farming). The
advantage over
conventional spraying
of insecticides is
that the Bt
toxin only kills those
pests that feed on the
plant, and has no
impact on the non
target insects in the
field. In contrast,
the spraying of
insecticides may be
harmful to some
non-target organisms.
-
By
increasing crop
productivity on
existing farmland, GM
technology reduces the
need to encroach on
wilderness or marginal
land, so preserving
natural habitats.
-
By
sustaining crop
productivity and
combating the natural
enemies of crop
plants, GM technology
may also help to
preserve endangered
crop species. This was
exemplified by papaya
cultivation in Hawaii,
which was in danger of
being wiped out by a
virus.
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Produce biomaterials
Plants can make a broad
range of renewable
materials starting with
the basic photosynthetic
process of forming
sugars from atmospheric
carbon dioxide using the
energy of sunlight.
Since they are
alternatives to raw
materials derived from
fossil fuels, this makes
them especially valuable
in the context of
sustainable development
and of the new 'bioeconomy',
in which chemical
processes will
increasingly be replaced
by biological ones.
For example, plants have
been genetically
modified to produce
plastics such as
polyhydroxybutyrate, a
biodegradable polyester
which can be a
substitute for
polypropylene. Although
this was a technical
success in both model
and crop plants
(including mustard,
cotton and maize), the
economic feasibility of
the approach has still
to be worked out.
Another approach for the
production of
biomaterials from
renewable plant
resources is to use
plant carbohydrates as
starting material for
fermentation.
The industrial uses of
starch potatoes have
long been exploited.
Examples where the
potato has been
genetically modified to
produce more of the
right materials are now
close to the market.
Biodegradable polylactic
acid is a useful polymer
and fibre already
produced
cost-effectively on a
commercial scale for a
number of years.
Starting with a
fermentable carbon
source, an enormous
range of useful
materials can be
produced, and it is here
that we see the synergy
between green (plant)
and white (industrial)
biotechnology.
Plant biotechnology can
also be used to tailor
the structure of plant
carbohydrates to modify
their physicochemical
properties and
facilitate industrial
processing. High-amylopectin
potatoes have been
developed, for example,
producing starch ideally
suited to industrial
processing. Cellulose is
the most abundant plant
polymer, with large
quantities being used to
make paper. Genetic
modification of poplar
trees is being used to
make wood pulp
extraction less
polluting, by reducing
the level of lignin, a
phenolic polymer which
is tightly bound to
cellulose and needs to
be removed by aggressive
chemical processing.
[top]
Production of
pharmaceuticals and
vaccines
Plants have been used as
sources of
pharmaceuticals across
the millenia, but modern
biotechnology has opened
a new era in the
exploitation of plants
for preventing and
curing diseases. In
particular, there are
two main advantages to
the production of
therapeutic proteins and
vaccines in plants:
-
the efficiency of
plants as protein
factories, compared to
microbial or animal
cell culture, although
the overall
cost-effectiveness of
the process has to be
evaluated on a
case-by-case basis;
-
product safety, as
plant-derived
pharmaceuticals do not
contain the infectious
agents that may
contaminate drugs
extracted from human
or animal cell
culture.
There are currently
three types of
application:
-
therapeutic proteins
including
haemoglobins,
anticoagulants,
enzymes (e.g. lipases
or b-glucocerebrosidases),
peptide hormones (e.g.
insulin or somatropin),
antiviral or
antibacterial peptides
(e.g. interferons and
lactoferrin),
-
antibodies (e.g.
against a bacterial
agent of tooth decay,
Streptococcus
mutans)
-
vaccines (e.g. against
Hepatitis B or
intestinal bacteria
causing infantile
diarrhoea, a common
cause of child death
in developing
countries).
A particularly
challenging project aims
to fight diseases
widespread in the
tropics, like Hepatitis
B, by developing edible
vaccines, which do not
require cold storage.
Banana is one of the
major food crops which
are envisaged as
vehicles for this novel
oral vaccination
strategy. The efficacy
of edible vaccines in
banana or potato has now
been demonstrated and
the next challenge is to
take these novel
products to market.
Practical issues to be
addressed include
efficient segregation
from their traditional
food counterparts, clear
traceability rules and
appropriate patient
information
[top]
Produce biofuels
Biofuels are
plant-derived
alternatives to fossil
fuels, currently mainly
bioethanol and biodiesel.
Bioethanol, today used
in blends with petrol,
is made by the
fermentation of plant
sugars (often starting
from starch) while
biodiesel is produced by
esterification of oil
from crops such as
rapeseed, palm or
soybean. Worldwide
energy consumption is
expected to grow by 50%
by 2025, much of this
mushrooming demand being
driven by developing
countries. The European
Union has a target of
having 6% of
biomass-derived fuels in
its total fuel
consumption by 2010.
This target needs strong
political commitments
and economic incentives,
as well as
multi-disciplinary
efforts to make such a
scenario technically
feasible. However,
concerns about the
sustainability of some
of the current sources
of biofuels are holding
back progress.
Plant biotechnology will
be an important tool for
developing high-yielding
energy crops, allowing
the cost-efficient
transformation of their
biomass into biofuels.
The current generation
of biofuels competes
with food production,
but the future use of
biomass and dedicated
energy crops will
provide a more
sustainable supply. High
crop yields can be
obtained by optimizing
plant architecture
(optimal light capture),
by extending the
lifespan of the
light-capturing leaves,
by controlling
development (delayed or
suppressed flowering
which is a highly
energy-consuming
process), and by
avoiding biomass losses
due to pathogen attacks
and post-harvest
diseases. Energy crops
should also have
suitable compositional
properties (sugar and
oil contents) and the
raw materials they
provide should be
readily accessible for
industrial processing
(easy fractionation of
lignin and cellulose for
instance). At each of
these levels, gene
transfer technologies
(combined with other
breeding techniques) may
prove very powerful. The
selection of novel,
annual or perennial
crops specially
dedicated to the supply
of renewable energy,
will need rapid gene
identification and
recombination strategies
using biotechnology
[top]
Mitigate the rise of
atmospheric CO2 and
global warming
Agriculture is a
significant contributor
to the emission of
greenhouse gases,
including carbon
dioxide, methane and
nitrous oxide. At the
same time, carbon
dioxide is sequestered
in plant biomass, and
the lifetime and the
decomposition rate of
organic matter will
influence the carbon
balance between the
terrestrial ecosystems
and the atmosphere.
Because of the pressing
need to reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases to
mitigate global warming,
changes in agricultural
practices may be needed.
After more than a decade
of GM crop cultivation,
it is possible to draw
conclusions about its
effects on greenhouse
gas emission and CO2
sequestration:
-
By
facilitating no-till
and conservation
tillage systems, GM
technology reduces
tractor use and fuel
consumption. Due to
the efficacy of
post-emergence weed
control permitted by
herbicide-tolerance
technology, a
significant number of
farmers have moved to
such management
systems.
-
GM
technology contributes
to a higher level of
carbon sequestration
in biomass, as
conservation tillage
results in increased
soil organic matter.
This cropping system
also reduces the
emission of other
greenhouse gases, like
nitrous oxide,
released in the
atmosphere as a side
effect of nitrogen
fertilization, as
conservation tillage
systems allow lower
levels of fertilizer
use.
-
In
2007, the permanent
carbon dioxide savings
from reduced fuel use
was the equivalent of
removing nearly 0.5
million cars from the
road for a year and
the additional soil
carbon sequestration
gains were equivalent
to removing nearly 5.8
million cars from the
roads. In total, this
was equal to about 17%
of all registered cars
in the UK. As use of
GM crops continues to
increase, so will
reductions in
greenhouse gas
emissions.
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