Notes

Genetically modified crops offer more benefits than herbicides

In the wild, herbicide resistance could confer advantages to plants.

Credit Xiao Yang
A well-known method of the genetic modification of plants to make them resistant to herbicides is found to confer advantages to weedy varieties rice even when herbicide isn't present. These findings suggest that such modifications could have a wide spectrum of effects that extend beyond farms, and even out into the wild.

Many cultivars have been genetically modified in order to ward off glyphosate. The herbicide was initially available under the trade name Roundup. This glyphosate-resistant crop allows farmers to eradicate the majority of plants without causing damage to their crop.

Glyphosate slows the growth of plants by inhibiting EPSP synthase (an enzyme that is involved in the production of specific amino acids and various other molecules). This enzyme can comprise as much as 35% or more of a plant's total mass. The genetic-modification technique -- utilized, for instance, in the Roundup Ready crops made by the biotech giant Monsanto located in St Louis, Missouri -usually includes inserting genes into the crop's genome to increase the production of EPSP synthase. Genes usually come from bacteria that cause disease to plants.

This additional EPSP synthase permits the plant to withstand the effects of glyphosate. Biotechnology labs have also tried to make EPSP-synthase more plant-based than bacteria using genes from plants. This was partially done to exploit an inconsistency found in US law that allows the approval of regulatory authorities for organisms that are not derived from bacteria or parasites.

A few studies have looked into the possibility that transgenes that confer glyphosate tolerance can -- once they become weedy , or wild relatives by cross-pollinatingcan boost the plant's survival and reproduce. Norman Ellstrand, a University of California plant geneticist, says that in the absence of selection pressure, any kind of transgene is likely to confer disadvantage in wild plants. The additional machinery could lower fitness.

Lu Baorong, an ecologist from Fudan University in Shanghai has revised that opinion. ラウンドアップ He discovered that glyphosate resistance provides an impressive fitness boost to a weedy version of the popular rice crop Oryza sativa.

In the study published this month in New Phytologist 1, Lu and his colleagues genetically modified the cultivated rice species to enhance its own EPSP synthase and cross-bred the modified rice with a weedy relative.

The team then allowed the offspring of cross-breeding to cross-breed with one other to create second generation hybrids. They were identical genetically apart from the number of EPSP synthase genes they had. The researchers found that the hybrids with greater than one copy of the gene that encodes EPSP synthase expressed more enzyme and produced more tryptophan in line with what was expected.

Researchers also discovered that transgenic plants showed higher rates of photosynthesis, produced more flowers, and produced 48-125% fewer seeds per plant than non-transgenic hybrids. This was in spite of the fact that glyphosate was not present.

ラウンドアップ Lu states that making the weedy grain more competitive can create more difficulties to farmers all over the world who have crops infected by the pest.

Brian Ford-Lloyd of the University of Birmingham, UK, says "If the EPSP synthase gene is introduced to wild rice species, their genetic variety is crucial for conserving, could be threatened because it would outcompete the normal varieties." "This is among the clearest examples of highly plausible negative effects (of GM crops] on the environment."

https://flights-ag.com/blog/herbicide/84/ The popular belief that genetically modified crops with additional copies their genes are safer is disproved by this research. Lu says that "our study is not proving that this is true."

Researchers believe that their findings require a reconsideration of how genetically modified crops will be controlled in the near future. ラウンドアップ Ellstrand thinks that biosafety rules may be relaxed because we are able to enjoy a high level satisfaction from the two decades of genetic engineering. ラウンドアップ "But the research suggests that new products need an in-depth evaluation."


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