Genetic Engineering and Transgenic Breeding

Abstract

Transgenic seed technology takes about 10 years to be in the market. Its performance should be assessed through environmental, economic, and social impacts, which are the pillars of sustainable intensification of agriculture. It must be, therefore, integrated into respective farming systems to contribute to global food security and reduce the negative impacts of agriculture in ecosystems. Transgenic crops can contribute to adapting agriculture to the changing climate and mitigating it by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Biosafety risk and other safety assessments should not be politically driven, or become a delay for delivering a technology that is safe and helps to feed people. Such assessments need to be based on science and be transparent. Meta-analysis provides a robust and quantitative framework for combining results from independent research, and improves the statistical power. Meta-analyses show that transgenic crops perform better than their conventional counterparts in terms of yield, production costs, and gross margins, and reduce chemical pesticide use. Governments should therefore weigh risks and benefits among various options---including transgenic crops---rather than excluding a priori any technology that improves livelihoods. Herbicide (glyphosate) tolerance, host plant resistance to insects (Bt) and viruses, crop composition, and extended shelf life were bred through plant genetic engineering on the first generation of transgenic cultivars, while the pipeline includes traits related to host plant resistance to pathogens and insects, tolerance to other herbicides, better food and feed quality, enhanced adaptation to stressful environments, and improved input efficiency. Cisgenesis, intragenesis, zinc-finger nuclease technology, oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM), RNA-dependent DNA methylation (RdDM), grafting on genetically modified rootstock, reverse breeding, and agro-infiltration are new plant breeding techniques for genetic modification. Regulations may affect these new breeding techniques even if some of them make genetic changes in the genome more precise. Any regulatory system should be based on the characteristics of the bred-crops, irrespective of the method used to develop them.