NUFFIELD COUNCIL: EXPLORE GM CROPS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Genetically modified (GM) crops can contribute to substantial progress in improving agriculture as they have demonstrated the potential to reduce environmental degradation and address specific health, ecological and agricultural problems. With this statement, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics says that it affirms its conclusion in 1999 that there is “an ethical obligation to explore these potential benefits responsibly, in order to contribute to the reduction of poverty, and to improve food security and profitable agriculture in developing countries.”

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is an independent body in the United Kingdom established by the Trustees of the Nuffield Foundation in 1991 to consider the ethical issues arising from developments in medicine and biology.

In its report entitled “ The Use of Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries: A Follow-Up Discussion Paper”, the Council notes that possible costs, benefits and risks associated with particular GM crops can be assessed only on a case by case basis. It suggests that in deciding to use GM crops, it is essential to focus on the specific situation in a particular country, particularly on how a crop compares with other alternatives.

View the full report online at http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/filelibrary/pdf/gm_crops_paper_final.pdf

BIOTECH CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS FROM EASTERN EUROPE

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service’s Global Agriculture Information Network (GAIN) recently published separate reports on how consumers from four countries in Eastern Europe (Bosnia-Hercegovina, Czech Republic, Croatia and Hungary) perceive biotechnology. The following are the highlights of the reports:

Consumer perceptions from Bosnia-Hercegovina is downloadable at http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200312/146085467.pdf; from the Czech Republic at http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200312/146085535.pdf; from Croatia at http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200312/146085464.pdf; and from Hungary at http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200312/146085466.pdf

FUTURE OF BIOTECH IN SOYBEANS

Biotechnology can increase the value of soybean by creating quality-enhancing traits. For example, the use of soybean protein and oil in the food market can be expanded by improving soybean isolate flavor, functionality and oil/protein health characteristics for consumers. Another possibility is to create traits that lead to soybeans with increased industrial and energy uses such as biodiesel and lubricants. John Soper, Dennis Judd, Daria Schmidt, and Steve Sullivan of Pioneer Hi-Bred gave these insights in a paper on “The future of biotechnology in soybeans”, one in a series of articles published online in Agbioforum, Vol. 6.

Soper and colleagues, however, stressed that “capturing value also hinges on acceptance of the technology used to create the value. To help ensure acceptance, soybeans derived through biotechnology must be developed while following stringent safety and regulatory guidelines established by industry and government agencies. These guidelines must be followed from product concept to post-market.“

Another challenge for the soybean industry is extensive regulatory scrutiny such that the value of new soybean could be derailed by increased regulatory cost. The authors conclude that “the industry and others will need to work to help consumers and regulators understand the impact of additional regulatory proposals and the safety procedures that are already in place.”

See the full paper online at http://www.agbioforum.org/v6n12/v6n12a03-sullivan.htm.

HEALTHIER SOYBEANS THRU BIOENGINEERING

The consumption of soybean as a health food is often associated with its unappealing flavor. Also, the possible food and beverage applications of this crop are limited due to the constraints of soybean storage protein properties. According to Anthony J. Kinney of the Crop Genetics Research and Development, DuPont Experimental Station, thru soybean biotechnology, healthier soy-based food can be created, and other concerns can be addressed.

In his paper entitled “Engineering Soybeans for Food and Health,” Kinney stated that biotechnology can help increase the consumption of soy-based food. He suggested three possible alternatives:

Improving soy flavor – if the compounds causing the unappealing flavor of soybean can be identified, the formation of these compounds can be prevented or reduced.

Changing the functional properties (solubility, water absorption, viscosity, gelation, emulsification, flavor binding) of soy proteins – these could make soybean a versatile crop with more possible food and beverage applications, apart from its improved flavor.

Augmenting soybean health properties – enhancing the health properties could provide an additional incentive to consume soy products.

This article was published in AgBioForum, Vol. 6, Numbers 1 & 2, and can be viewed at http://www.agbioforum.org/v6n12/v6n12a06-kinney.pdf.

BT COTTON PROMISING IN ARGENTINA

“Transgenic Bt cotton can halve pesticide application rates in Argentina while significantly increasing yields. Although smallholder farmers are not currently using the technology, gross benefits are predicted to be highest for them,” says Matin Qaim of the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn, and colleagues Eugenio J. Cap of the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA); and Alain de Janvry of the University of Californina, Berkeley.

Qaim and colleagues observed that yield gain of Bt cotton farmers (19% for large-scale growers and 41% for small producers) in Argentina are higher than the yield gains of farmers from other countries. The researchers attributed this to the current low levels of insecticide use by Bt cotton farmers. Pesticide usage is 50% less than what is applied to conventional cotton.

To illustrate the possible build-up of pest populations (specifically bollworm), biological model simulations were conducted. The simulations showed that rapid increase in pest populations is unlikely if the minimum non-Bt-refuge areas are preserved. Overall, Qaim and colleagues concluded that Bt cotton seem promising in areas where pest pressure is severe, and crop damage is not effectively controlled thru chemical pesticide applications and other methods.

These major points were discussed in the article “Agronomics and Sustainability of Transgenic Cotton in Argentina.” A copy of the full paper was published in AgBioForum, Vol. 6, Numbers 1 & 2; and can be downloaded at http://www.agbioforum.org/v6n12/v6n12a10-qaim.pdf.

COMPARATIVE SAFETY ASSESSMENT FOR GM CROPS

Instead of the Principle of Substantial Equivalence as a strategy to assess the food safety of genetically modified crops, the Comparative Safety Assessment approach is suggested. This will avoid misinterpretations and will better outline the comparative nature of the assessment while avoiding the idea that it is a safety assessment in itself. This was forwarded by Esther Kok and Harry Kuiper of the RIKILT Institute for Food Safety in Wageningen, the Netherlands in a review paper in the journal Trends in Biotechnology, Vol. 21, No.10.

Kok and Kuiper say that it is time to work towards a more balanced universal risk analysis system and basic safety assessment protocol for all novel food crop varieties. This would mean a Comparative Safety Assessment of available data on crop plant varieties with a history of safe use which should serve as a starting point for consumer safety assessment. Hence, this would lead to a system of reliable databases and informative profiles on individual compounds.

The full paper entitled “Comparative safety assessment for biotech crops” describes the analytical nature of the first step of the entire GM food safety assessment in combination with consecutive toxicological and nutritional evaluations.

For more information email Esther Kok at esther@kok.wur.nl. Trends in Biotechnology is available online at http://www.trends.com/tibtech.

NEW METHODS TO HASTEN SEQUENCING OF CROP GENOMES

Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor laboratory and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, New York, USA have developed two complementary methods that could dramatically shortcut the sequencing of many agriculturally important plant species. This was reported in the December 19, 2003 issue of the journal Science.

A new technique developed by Robert Martienssen and W. Richard McCombie of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory called “methylation filtration” will overcome the difficulties in sequencing repetitive DNA which contain few coding regions or genes. Methylation filtration preferentially captures the unmethylated, gene-rich regions of the corn genome for subsequent analysis.

The second method, developed by researchers at the University of Georgia, removes the repeated sequences by separating the DNA into "high-copy," gene-poor segments and "low-copy," gene-rich segments. Led by Cathy Whitelaw, the research team at TIGR compared sequences obtained by the two methods. About one fourth of the genes in each collection matched known gene sequences, while about 35 percent of the genes were represented in both collections. Using the two methods together could cut the amount of sequencing necessary to find all of the corn genes to about one-fourth of what it would take to sequence the entire genome.

Email W. Richard McCombie at mccombie@cshl.edu for more information. Science can be viewed online at http://www.sciencemag.org.