Genetically Modified Crops

1. What is agricultural biotechnology?

• 1.1 How is agricultural biotechnology defined?
• 1.2 How have agricultural technologies evolved over time?
  • 1.2.1 Understanding, characterizing and managing genetic resources
  • 1.2.2 Induced mutation-assisted breeding

1.1 How is agricultural biotechnology defined?

The source document for this Digest states:

Broadly speaking, biotechnology is any technique that uses living organisms or substances from these organisms to make or modify a product for a practical purpose (Box 2). Biotechnology can be applied to all classes of organism - from viruses and bacteria to plants and animals - and it is becoming a major feature of modern medicine, agriculture and industry. Modern agricultural biotechnology includes a range of tools that scientists employ to understand and manipulate the genetic make-up of organisms for use in the production or processing of agricultural products.

Some applications of biotechnology, such as fermentation and brewing, have been used for millennia. Other applications are newer but also well established. For example, micro-organisms have been used for decades as living factories for the production of life-saving antibiotics including penicillin, from the fungus Penicillium, and streptomycin from the bacterium Streptomyces. Modern detergents rely on enzymes produced via biotechnology, hard cheese production largely relies on rennet produced by biotech yeast and human insulin for diabetics is now produced using biotechnology.

Biotechnology is being used to address problems in all areas of agricultural production and processing. This includes plant breeding to raise and stabilize yields; to improve resistance to pests, diseases and abiotic stresses such as drought and cold; and to enhance the nutritional content of foods. Biotechnology is being used to develop low-cost disease-free planting materials for crops such as cassava, banana and potato and is creating new tools for the diagnosis and treatment of plant and animal diseases and for the measurement and conservation of genetic resources. Biotechnology is being used to speed up breeding programmes for plants, livestock and fish and to extend the range of traits that can be addressed. Animal feeds and feeding practices are being changed by biotechnology to improve animal nutrition and to reduce environmental waste. Biotechnology is used in disease diagnostics and for the production of vaccines against animal diseases.

Clearly, biotechnology is more than genetic engineering. Indeed, some of the least controversial aspects of agricultural biotechnology are potentially the most powerful and the most beneficial for the poor. Genomics, for example, is revolutionizing our understanding of the ways genes, cells, organisms and ecosystems function and is opening new horizons for marker-assisted breeding and genetic resource management. At the same time, genetic engineering is a very powerful tool whose role should be carefully evaluated. It is important to understand how biotechnology - particularly genetic engineering - complements and extends other approaches if sensible decisions are to be made about its use.

This chapter provides a brief description of current and emerging uses of biotechnology in crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry with a view to understanding the technologies themselves and the ways they complement and extend other approaches. It should be emphasized that the tools of biotechnology are just that: tools, not ends in themselves. As with any tool, they must be assessed within the context in which they are being used.

Source & ©: FAO "The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004"
Chapter 2: What is agricultural biotechnology? 

BOX 2 Defining agricultural biotechnology

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) defines biotechnology as: “any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products for specific use” (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992). This definition includes medical and industrial applications as well as many of the tools and techniques that are commonplace in agriculture and food production. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety defines “modern biotechnology” more narrowly as the application of: In vitro nucleic acid techniques, including recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and direct injection of nucleic acid into cells or organelles, or Fusion of cells beyond the taxonomic family, that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination barriers and that are not techniques used in traditional breeding and selection. (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2000) The FAO Glossary of biotechnology defines biotechnology broadly as in the CBD and narrowly as “a range of different molecular technologies such as gene manipulation and gene transfer, DNA typing and cloning of plants and animals” (FAO, 2001a). Recombinant DNA techniques, also known as genetic engineering or (more familiarly but less accurately) genetic modification, refer to the modification of an organism's genetic make-up using transgenesis, in which DNA from one organism or cell (the transgene) is transferred to another without sexual reproduction. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are modified by the application of transgenesis or recombinant DNA technology, in which a transgene is incorporated into the host genome or a gene in the host is modified to change its level of expression. The terms “GMO”, “transgenic organism” and “genetically engineered organism (GEO)” are often used interchangeably although they are not technically identical. For the purposes of this report they are used as synonyms.

Source & ©: FAO "The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004"
Chapter 2: What is agricultural biotechnology? , Box 2

1.2 How have agricultural technologies evolved over time?

• • 1.2.1 Understanding, characterizing and managing genetic resources
  • 1.2.2 Induced mutation-assisted breeding

1.2.1 Understanding, characterizing and managing genetic resources

The source document for this Digest states:

Farmers and pastoralists have manipulated the genetic make-up of plants and animals since agriculture began more than 10 000 years ago. Farmers managed the process of domestication over millennia, through many cycles of selection of the best adapted individuals. This exploitation of the natural variation in biological organisms has given us the crops, plantation trees, farm animals and farmed fish of today, which often differ radically from their early ancestors (see Table 1).

The aim of modern breeders is the same as that of early farmers - to produce superior crops or animals. Conventional breeding, relying on the application of classic genetic principles based on the phenotype or physical characteristics of the organism concerned, has been very successful in introducing desirable traits into crop cultivars or livestock breeds from domesticated or wild relatives or mutants (Box 3). In a conventional cross, whereby each parent donates half the genetic make-up of the progeny, undesirable traits may be passed on along with the desirable ones, and these undesirable traits may then have to be eliminated through successive generations of breeding. With each generation, the progeny must be tested for its growth characteristics as well as its nutritional and processing traits. Many generations may be required before the desired combination of traits is found, and time lags may be very long, especially for perennial crops such as trees and some species of livestock. Such phenotype-based selection is thus a slow, demanding process and is expensive in terms of both time and money. Biotechnology can make the application of conventional breeding methods more efficient.

Table 1: An agricultural technology timeline

Source & ©: FAO "The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004"
Chapter 2: What is agricultural biotechnology? 
Section Understanding, characterizing and managing genetic resources

1.2.2 Induced mutation-assisted breeding

The source document for this Digest states:

BOX 3 Induced mutation-assisted breeding
1 Available at www-infocris.iaea.org/MVD/ .
Spontaneous mutations are the “natural” motor of evolution, and the resource into which breeders tap to domesticate crops and to “create” better varieties. Without mutations, there would be no rice, or maize or any other crop. Starting in the 1970s, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and FAO sponsored research on mutation induction to enhance genetic improvement of food and industrial crops for breeding new improved varieties. Induced mutations are brought about by treating plant parts with chemical or physical mutagens and then selecting for desirable changes - in effect, to mimic spontaneous mutations and artificially broaden genetic diversity. The precise nature of the mutations induced has generally not been a concern irrespective of whether the mutant lines were used directly or as sources of new variation in cross-breeding programmes. Induced mutation to assist breeding has resulted in the introduction of new varieties of many crops such as rice, wheat, barley, apples, citrus, sugar cane and banana (the FAO/IAEA Mutant Varieties Database lists more than 2 300 officially released varieties1). The application of mutation induction to crop breeding has translated into a tremendous economic impact on agriculture and food production that is currently valued in billions of US dollars and millions of hectares of cultivated land. Recently, mutation techniques have undergone a renaissance, expanding beyond their direct use in breeding into novel applications such as gene discovery and reverse genetics.

Source & ©: FAO "The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004"
Chapter 2: What is agricultural biotechnology? 
Section Understanding, characterizing and managing genetic resources, Box 3