Notes

Genetically modified crops offer benefits over the weeds

Wild plants could be capable of resisting herbicides.

ラウンドアップ ラウンドアップ Credit Xiao Yang
It has been proven that a genetic modification technique is extensively used to make crops herbicide-resistant, confers advantages on an invasive variety of rice. These results suggest that such modifications can have a broad range of effects beyond the farms and into the wild.

A variety of crop varieties have been genetically modified so that they can resist the glyphosate. The herbicide was initially available under the trade name Roundup. Farmers are able to eliminate herbicides from their fields using this glyphosate resistance , without damaging their crops.

Glyphosate can inhibit plant growth by inhibiting EPSP synase, an enzyme involved in the creation of amino acids as well as other chemicals which comprise around 35% of plants' mass. Genetic modification -- utilized, for instance in Roundup Ready crops made by the biotechnology giant Monsanto located in St Louis, Missouri -generally involves inserting genes into a plant's genome to boost EPSP-synthase production. The genes typically come from bacteria that have infected the plants.

ラウンドアップ The extra EPSP synase allows for plants to counter the effects of glyphosate. ラウンドアップ Biotechnology labs have also tried to make use of genes from plants instead of bacteria to boost the production of EPSP synthase, in part to exploit a loophole that is in US law that facilitates regulatory approval of organisms carrying transgenes that aren't made from bacterial pests.

There aren't many studies that have examined the possibility that transgenes that confer tolerance can -- once they are weedy or become wild relatives via cross-pollinating -- increase the plants' longevity and reproductive. Norman Ellstrand of University of California Riverside states, "The conventional expectation is that any transgene that is found in nature will be detrimental if there's no selection pressure because the additional machinery may lower the fitness."

Lu Baorong of Fudan University in Shanghai is in the process of challenging this notion. The study demonstrates that glyphosate resistance even when not applied to a weedy varieties of the rice crop could provide a substantial health benefit.

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

The researchers then allowed offspring that were cross-bred to breed with one-another, creating second-generation hybrids that were genetically identical to their parents with the exception the number of duplicates of the gene that codes for EPSP synthase. The hybrids with more copies were more likely to produce more tryptophan and have more enzyme levels over their counterparts that were not modified.

Researchers also found that plants with transgenic genes were more photosynthesis-intensive as well as produced more flowers and produced 48 to 125 percent fewer seeds per plant than non-transgenic hybrids. This was in spite of the fact that glyphosate was not present.

https://flights-ag.com/blog/herbicide/84/ Lu believes that making rice that is weedy more competitive might cause more problems for farmers across the world who's fields are being infested by the pest.

"If the EPSP-synthase gene gets in the wild rice species their genetic diversity, which is really important to conserve may be at risk as the transgene's genotype could outcompete normal species," Brian Ford-Lloyd an expert in plant genetics at the University of Birmingham, UK. This is one of the clearest examples of extremely likely negative effects of GM crop] on the environment."

The general public believes that genetically engineered crops with more copies or microorganisms' genes are safer than ones containing only their own genes. "Our study suggests that this isn't necessarily the case," says Lu.

ラウンドアップ al3 A few researchers believe this discovery calls for a review of future regulation of genetically modified crops. Ellstrand believes that biosafety laws could be relaxed as we enjoy a high level security from two decades of genetic engineering. This study isn't proof that novel products are safe.


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