For the past two decades, promises of crop improvement have been the domain of genetically modified plants: mostly, crops supplemented with bacterial genes to resist pests or weedkillers like Roundup. More than 85 percent of U.S. corn, soy or cotton grown contains such genes.

But there is more than one way to transform a plant.

Using advanced biotechnology, long hidden in the background and only now starting to pay dividends, scientists are changing crops without tapping foreign genes -- and often without the regulatory oversight that is given to GM crops.

Many of these crops use latent effects of genes squirreled away in discarded seed varieties to create breeds that at first glance seem artificial. There is corn so infused with vitamin A precursors that it practically glows orange, rice that can survive more than two weeks of flooded conditions, and wheat that resists the advance of devastating aphids.

Such specialized crops are possible because researchers are mastering the science of breeding. Using techniques collectively known as molecular breeding, geneticists have started to return results in a variety of plants, said Ed Buckler, a plant geneticist at Cornell University who recently helped sequence the corn genome.

"We know that old-fashioned good breeding works," Buckler said. "And a lot of that is an intelligent numbers game" based on genetic theories elaborated by Gregor Mendel more than a century ago. Molecular breeding, he added, "is now a way to do that much faster."

Increasingly affordable with improved technology, molecular breeding is becoming the mode of business in the crop world, said Bonnie McClafferty, development head at HarvestPlus, a nonprofit funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that supports molecular breeding research into improving plant nutrition in Africa and Asia.

"People don't understand that we're not working with Gregor Mendel anymore," McClafferty said. "The science is advancing, and there's a whole variety of tools to use."

In fact, molecular breeding is only the start of a bewildering diversity of biotech approaches to crop development that defy the conventional notion of splicing foreign genes into plants. This next generation could shake up what has become a stalled debate -- call it the Roundup Ready stalemate -- by introducing GM crops that, for example, use only their species' native genes or have the expression of their own genes silenced.

While the techniques draw from the same pool of knowledge, and travel together in scientific circles, many environmental groups do not oppose molecular breeding, while stridently critiquing current GM crops, according to Marco Contiero, the European biotech policy director for the environmental group Greenpeace.

"Genetic engineering is just a part of modern biotechnology," Contiero said. "We are against this specific application. We are not against marker-assisted selection."

Most scientists believe that molecular breeding and advanced genetic modification will eventually form a powerful tandem, said David Baulcombe, a professor of botany at the University of Cambridge and the chairman of a recent report issued by the United Kingdom's Royal Society on the future of agriculture.

"Within genetic modification, you've got to remember there's a whole bunch of technologies," Baulcombe said. "There's GM where you move plants' genes around. GM where you use artificial genes to silence gene expression. And then there's the technology that is out in the field now in which bacterial genes have been moved into the crop."

After Mendel

For thousands of years, crop breeding remained much the same: Farmers crossbred plants with desirable traits like high yield, as often as not reproducing those traits in offspring. Mendel clarified the situation, but conventional breeding practices today, though stirred by developments like the green revolution's hybrids, would remain roughly familiar to farmers of a century ago.

Molecular breeding has, to some extent, overturned this framework, even prompting some scientists to call for new, post-Mendel theories of breeding. The techniques rely in principle on the increasing inventory of genes that have been identified as influencing, if to a limited degree, traits in plants. For some genetically simple crops, like rice, these clusters of genes have strong effects, while the genes of more complex grains like corn and wheat have been more difficult to pin down.

6 Comments

1. 1. Semiahmoo 09:01 PM 12/21/09

   When you refer to "increasing soy's production up to a bushel", do you mean per plant, per hectare, per acre, per square mile ... ?

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2. 2. tjostemj 09:53 PM 12/21/09

   Paul Ehrlich saw a pending population crash that didn’t happen. The crash didn’t happen because of the advances in agriculture. Commercial fertilizer, plant breeding, and genetically engineered crops have brought about abundant crops that are sufficient to feed our world’s human population of 6.8 billion
   
   Genetically engineered (GE) crops are a lifesaving breakthrough for the developing world because plants have been created that contains all the essential nutrients for human health. It is a tragedy that well meaning “greens” in Europe have poisoned the minds of Africans against the use of GE crops. This campaign has caused the starvation of untold numbers of Africans.
   
   The greens and organic farmers need to look into this biology and accept molecular breeding and GE seed production as they are engineered to produce the hardiest, most nutritious and non-allergenic foods.
   
   We need to cope with feeding a growing human population on a planet that is losing agricultural land to climate change. Our hope is that molecular breeding and genetic engineering may increase our crop productivity to keep pace with the nutrition needs of our world’s population.
   

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3. 3. karlchwe 09:01 PM 12/22/09

   Animal breeders could do similar things to help prevent genetic disorders like hip dysplasia caused by excessive and unscrupulous inbreeding.

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4. 4. soyscience in reply to Semiahmoo 10:16 AM 2/24/10

   Bushels per acre is the standard unit of grain yield for soybeans in the US. One bushel equal 60 pounds of grain at 13% moisture.

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5. 5. ScientistOfGnomes 06:48 PM 4/9/10

   The problem here is that there are unknown nutrients and other chemicals/compounds that are beneficial to human health. These nutrients haven't yet been discovered or identified.

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6. 6. SebastianRachor 11:20 AM 8/14/10

   There are millions of people out there who hate monsanto and everything they stand for - agent orange, gm, round-up and else. Given this fact and the economic need (if there is one, that isn�t made by ourselfes), molecular breeding will hopefully be, what GMOs want to stand for: A clean, new way without any impact to nature or our health.

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