DROUGHT-RESISTANT CORN: Monsanto is seeking approval of the first strain of corn that tolerates drought.
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Climate change has yet to diminish crop yields in the U.S. corn belt but scientists expect drought to become more common due to global warming in coming years. That could impact everything from the price of food to the price of fuel planet-wide. As a result, for the last several years agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta have been pursuing genetic modification to enable the corn plant to thrive even without enough rain. And now the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering approving a new corn hybrid genetically engineered to thrive on less water—the first time such a corn strain would be available.
"Working on something like drought is more complex than introducing a trait like insect resistance," says plant breeder Bob Reiter, vice president of biotechnology at Monsanto, the company seeking approval for the new strain. "We have screened through thousands of genes in the past several years, more than in the entire history for the herbicide-resistant or insect protection."
Monsanto researchers, working with German chemical giant BASF Corp., settled on a gene called "cold shock protein B" that is native to the microbe known as Bacillus subtilis, a soil bacteria whose special skill is to shut down, for years if need be, when environmental conditions such as drought would otherwise kill it. The new gene won't confer that capability to corn but rather will help to maintain normal growth even when the crop is provided with less water than normal.
"What it seems to be doing, it's helping the plant basically to maintain more normal metabolic levels in the plant as opposed to trying to shut those processes down under stress," Reiter explains. "Next year, in 2012, we will be doing farm trials with farmers to evaluate the gene in different hybrids."
In fact, the new gene will have to work in concert with other introduced genetic packages, such as the genes that make some corn hybrids survive application of glyphosate, the Monsanto-produced herbicide more commonly known as Roundup. "There are 34,000 genes in a corn plant," Reiter says. "Having 10 or 12 or even 15 more express correctly and work in concert, I don't think it's a big challenge."
In field trials in drier regions of the western U.S., the drought-tolerant corn delivered seven to 10 extra bushels per acre, according to Monsanto and BASF. The USDA estimates that average annual global corn crop losses due to "moderate drought" are 15 percent per year already.
At the same time, human health or environmental impacts remain unknown for this new strain. The U.S. National Research Council found in 2004, however, that no adverse health effects have been found that can be attributed to genetic engineering despite American corn consumption rising from 5.85 kilograms per capita annually in 1980 to 15 kilograms annually by 2008, while the portion of the crop genetically engineered rose from zero to 80 percent over the same period. The USDA will collect public comments on the proposal to allow wider use of such corn until July 11 and then make its final decision.
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11 Comments
Add CommentWhile the human, animal and the environmental impacts are yet unknown for this particular drought-resistant gene(wouldn't we need more time and independent research?!), since the gene is going to be stacked with those coded for herbicide-resistance, we have an idea as to how the latter impacts animal and human health, as well as the environment. There have been many reports of negative impacts of RR crops on human and animal health. Don Huber has been ringing the warning bell for years and in 2009 stated that the "widespread use of glyphosate that we see today in agriculture in the United States can 'significantly increase the severity of various plant diseases, impair plant defense to pathogens and diseases, and immobilize soil and plant nutrients rendering them unavailable for plant use." Most recently, he sent a letter to the USDA warning about a potentially new, self-replicating, micro-fungal virus-sized organism which may be causing spontaneous abortions in livestock.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe most obvious evidence of adverse impacts from glyphosate resistant crops has come in the form of superweeds. Bill Freese of Center for Food Safety, in noting that the nation is facing a superweed epidemic, stated that, "[a]lready, the vast majority of soybeans and cotton, and 70% of our corn, is Roundup Ready, leading to over 230 million lbs. of glyphosate being sprayed each year, and over 10 million acres infested with weeds that have evolved resistance to Roundup."
And while we are on the subject of "knowing" about adverse impacts of GMOs, we will not have a true appreciation of the negative impacts of GMOs until the seeds and the technology is tested independently. However, “as a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-seed-companies-control-gm-crop-research
Likewise, "when scientists are prevented from examining the raw ingredients in our nation’s food supply or from testing the plant material that covers a large portion of the country’s agricultural land, the restrictions on free inquiry become dangerous." see id; see also D. Humber ("[u]nfortunately, most researchers are forbidden to do work in the area. They don't have access to isogenic lines (conventional and Roundup Ready plant lines that are otherwise genetically identical); the materials are denied to researchers." @ http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/may10/consequenceso_widespread_glyphosate_use.php).
~GMOJournal
www.gmo-journal.com
NO TO GMO, NO TO MONSANTO, NO TO FRANKEN-FOOD
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the people trying to sell us on the idea of 'going green' are the people polluting the rivers and food (i.e. selling us water while they pollute rivers). Check out The Venus Project (www.thevenusproject.com) and Mr. Jacque Fresco who has designed technical solutions for the people problems we ALL share. i.e. we may not be able to stop a drought but we can certainly retain rain waters so it's available when there is a big dry season. The corporations and governments do not include the benefit of people at all (no way, no how)
Mamma D "^_^"
I wonder how corn grown with less water could still produce so many large ears of juicy, moisture-laden corn? Or does it? I didn't see any mention of plans for taste testing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@GMOJournal: Are you proposing that Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta et al. are _knowingly_ selling seeds to their customers that have all of the bad attributes you describe? Seriously? Do you really think they would sacrifice their entire multibillion dollar business for a few years of sales? And that the thousands of farmers who year after year plant these seeds, and the millions of consumers who eat the products, wouldn't have noticed the putative problems?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jtdwer: The seeds in question are for field corn, not sweet corn. Totally different crop and essentially raised only for ethanol production, animal feed and processed food components.
I wish that Scientific American would make an effort not to use "corn" as a synonym for "maize." Corn is a catchall for all sorts of grain. The "corn" that Joseph hoarded in Egypt was mostly wheat and barley, the principal food and feed grains in that part of the world at that time. It contained not a grain of maize, that species being indigenous to the New World and unknown in the Old until Christopher Columbus homogenized the globe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting that most if not all of the "sweet" corn bought at the grocery taste like field corn I ate as a child raw from the field...nothing like real sweet corn if you can find it...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually I'm more upset with what they've done to peanuts over the last 20 year...so sad...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe safety of GM food is no more controversial than the proposition that the earth is 6000 years old and created by an intelligent act. That a few people with science educations or who are working in scientific fields continue to press the case for creationsim does not equate to a Scientific controversy. While it is entirely reasonable and appropriate for people to hold a view that GM food is philosophically or ideologically repugnant the case against GM food should be argued on that basis rather than using poor or non science to bolster a demonstrably weak arguement about hazard. The most pressing issue of our time is uncontrolled population increase and a decline in the increase in food production. Within 10 years food security, just getting enough to eat, will become a principle preoccupation of governments all around the world. We need every technology we can to address this issue including GM food. Those who attack GM food for ideological reasons place the lives of millions at risk
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMacgrant, would you be surprised to learn that these big companies jeopardize huge environmental risks for their profits? Is you confidence that they don't so secure that the scientific concerns are not to be taken seriously? Why do they not allow independent researchers examine their products? Proprietary concerns shouldn't trump safety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish that Diesel67 would accept that SA is an American publication and as such writes with American usage. Corn in American usage = maize. You clearly understood what they meant and so the distinction obviously wasn't required even for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSqueedle - By now I'm attuned to the differences between modern English and Elizabethan, aka Bible English. But when I first began to study the Bible at six years of age or so, I just assumed tht Joseph amassed that yellow stuff [now I know that wild or cultivated maize is not necessarily yellow, and there are cultures that consider yellow maize fit only for livestock and poultry] that we boil up and eat on the cob in summertime. I also used the Biblical Hebrew word that Elizabethans translate "corn" as the word for maize, as when I asked a fellow student in Hebrew to pass the maize in the lunchroom. My Israeli teachers were perplexed, since the modern Hebrew word for maize is completely different.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, this is the reason we use Linnaean nomenclature: Zea mays connotes maize all over the scientific world.