Non-GM plant breeding continues to massively out-deliver GM - despite all the GM hype and false claims.
1.So now only GM can save the orange!
2.Kew’s growth strategy: hybrid crops without the genetic modification
3.University of Arkansas releases two non-GMO soybeans - high yield, multi-disease resistant
EXTRACT: A new generation of wild-domesticated crop hybrids could be more resistant to floods, droughts and extreme temperatures, using a technology which many scientists say is better understood and more effective than genetic modification. Ruth Eastwood, of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, said the procedure could potentially be safer than GM because their similar genetic backgrounds meant there was a “lower likelihood of unexpected interactions between genes”. (item 2)
RESOURCE: Check out the section on our website - www.gmwatch.org - dedicated to the many non-GM breakthroughs massively outpacing GM in areas like disease resistance, drought resistance, flood resistance, salt tolerance, pest resistance, higher yield, biofortification, biocontrols and aflatoxin.
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1. So now only GM can save the orange!
GMWatch, 29 July 2013
There is a public hearing on GM labeling in New York on the 30 July.
https://www.facebook.com/events/514831028586077/
In the run up to this hearing, the New York Times has published several pieces, including a very long article by Amy Hamon on a disease threat to oranges in Florida. Hamon's GM-sympathetic piece suggests GM is the only potential solution to the problem.
This is in fact just the latest variant on a claim that has been repeatedly used to try and boost GM, particularly in the case of fruit! There have for instance been repeated claims, including in the New York Times, that only GM can deliver the papaya from the ringspot virus, and that a GM virus-resistant papaya saved Hawaii's papaya industry. In fact, Amy Hamon has said that it was the NYT's coverage of GM papayas that helped inspire her piece on GM oranges. The NYT's piece reports on the man who created the GM papaya as a "crop savior" and "the man who saved the papaya."
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/09/21/21greenwire-crop-savior-blazes-biotech-trail-but-few-scien-88379.html
But the NYT has failed to report that using conventional breeding other researchers have developed a non-GM papaya that is resistant to exactly the same virus. Those researchers comment in their paper, "Application of these results should lead to restoration of the papaya industry in virus-infested regions of the Philippines and worldwide."
http://www.gmwatch.org/component/content/article/31-need-gm/12314
And it's seriously open to doubt that the GM papaya is the saviour of Hawaii's papaya industry, as the NYT has claimed. According to Hawaii's Department of Agriculture, despite the introduction of the GM virus-resistant papaya, "the annual yield of papayas in 2009 remained lower than when the ring spot virus was at its peak."
http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/50-2011/13413
And it's not only in the case of the papaya that GM has been hyped as the only saviour. Exactly the same thing has happened with the banana. "Only GM can save the banana" is the underlying message of a story that first surfaced in the world's media in 2001, made a comeback in 2003, and has done the rounds ever since. Each time this headline-grabbing story (re)emerges, it gets expertly debunked... until the next time comes around and yet more extravagant headlines are generated.
http://gmwatch.org/gm-myths/11244
These stories suggesting GM is the only means of saving one fruit or another seem to follow a set pattern. An often exaggerated crisis narrative is created in order to then present genetic engineering as the magical solution to an otherwise totally intractable problem. This then creates a false dilemma - accept GM or face the most dire consequences: no fruit to eat, whole industries wiped out etc. etc. The aim is clear - to blackmail reluctant consumers and farmers into accepting GM. In other words, the driving force behind such scare stories is the need to overcome market rejection.
No wonder GM supporters are ecstatic over Amy Hamon's NYT piece. Their hope is not so much that GM can save the orange, as that such stories can make the GM industry more acceptable.
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2. Kew’s growth strategy: hybrid crops without the genetic modification
Tom Bawden
The Independent on Sunday, 28 July 2013
*Plan to crossbreed crops with their wild cousins to help boost resistance to climate change
British researchers are leading an unprecedented global project to track down and store wild relatives of common crops – to help breed hybrids with higher yields that could be resistant to the effects of climate change.
Crossing staple crops such as wheat, potatoes and rice with their wild cousins offers a natural, safe alternative to the genetic modification of plants in the lab, according to experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, which is behind the scheme.
A report by researchers at Kew found that so-called “crop wild relatives” offer a badly neglected “treasure trove” of genetic information that, if harnessed properly, could boost agricultural production and be worth up to £128bn to the global economy.
But global stocks of crop wild relatives are woefully low and many species are close to extinction, with aubergine, potato, apple, sunflower and carrot varieties most at risk, the report found.
More than half the 455 known crop wild relatives of the world’s 29 most-consumed food plants have either not been collected at all, or are badly under-represented, making it essential to build stocks as soon as possible, warns Jonas Mueller, of the Kew Millennium Seed Bank.
“Now that we have identified the gaps the next step is to collect them and make them accessible for agricultural research. We know the climate will change but we don’t know how. So we don’t yet know how it will affect the crops that have been bred in the past specifically for the climate of today,” said Dr Mueller.
“It can take 15 to 20 years to breed a new crop variety, so every year we delay has a knock-on effect. It is a matter of urgency,” he added.
Locating and storing the crops will begin this summer in Italy, Cyprus and Portugal. It is a huge task that in many cases is easier said than done. Many crops lie in conflict-ridden regions such as Pakistan and Sudan, where wars can put both the species and the collectors at risk.
Some wild relatives of the faba bean – better known in this country as the broad bean – are found only in war-torn Syria and are a particular cause for concern. Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Australia and the US also have large numbers of priority crop wild relatives that need to be collected and stored.
Britain could benefit tremendously from an injection of wild genes as its widely grown crops of conventional wheat, potatoes, barley, carrots, sugar cane and apples face an increasingly unpredictable climate.
A new generation of wild-domesticated crop hybrids could be more resistant to floods, droughts and extreme temperatures, using a technology which many scientists say is better understood and more effective than genetic modification. Ruth Eastwood, of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, said the procedure could potentially be safer than GM because their similar genetic backgrounds meant there was a “lower likelihood of unexpected interactions between genes”. “It certainly is another option that has proved to be effective already,” she said.
Andy Jarvis, of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, also involved in the project, said: “Crop wild relatives are a potential treasure trove of useful characteristics that scientists can put to good use for making agriculture more resilient and improving the livelihoods of millions of people.”
Kew’s global 10-year programme with Germany’s Global Diversity Trust to identify and plug gaps in wild relative stocks is unprecedented.
Britain is also playing a leading role in the science. In May, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge claimed to have developed a new type of wheat that could increase its productivity by 30 per cent. It did this by recreating the original rare cross between an ancient wheat and wild grass species that happened in the Middle East 10,000 years ago, to form a “synthetic” wheat that can be crossed with modern UK varieties.
Advocates of plant breeding with crop wild relatives, which has been going on for decades, say it is a much safer and more effective way of improving plant yields than the fledgling process of genetic modification, which the Government is promoting in the face of an effective ban in Europe.
Success stories include a nutritionally enhanced variety of broccoli which contains higher levels of glucoraphanin, thought to slow down the progress of skin cancer.
An analysis of Kew’s research by the financial consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that commercial crops that have already benefited from the input of crop wild relatives will generate a total of £44bn in their lifetimes. This would rise to £128bn if the technique boosted the yield, disease resistance, and tolerance to temperature, drought and flooding of the world’s 32 most-consumed crops.
Ms Eastwood said: “Adapting agriculture to climate change is one of the most urgent challenges of our time. Crop wild relatives are already being used to improve our food crops right now and are extremely valuable economically as well. But they are underutilitised.”
The project team first identified all known wild relatives of the world’s most important crops. It then spent two years scouring gene banks, dried plant collections and museums to determine stock levels and gather data on sightings in the wild. From the data, the team identified species that are a high priority for collection.
The report comes a week after the UK Government announced plans to invest £160m setting up centres for innovation in sustainable farming and bringing new agricultural technologies to market.
The 29 crops: What’s involved?
The 29 crops covered in the project are: African rice, alfalfa, apple, eggplant (aubergine), bambara groundnut, banana, barley, wheat, lima bean (butter bean), carrot, chickpea, common bean, cowpea, faba bean (broad bean), finger millet, grasspea, lentil, oat, pea, pearl millet, pigeon pea, plantain, potato, rice, rye, sorghum, sunflower, sweet potato and vetch.
Early winners: potatoes and wheat
The breeding of staples with their “crop wild relatives” (CWRs) has already proved beneficial.
Late blight is one of the most damaging diseases for potatoes: its negative economic impact is thought to be $3.5bn per year in developed countries alone. Resistance to the condition in current European potato varieties has been exclusively derived from CWRs. Varieties of potato with CWR-derived late-blight resistance, such as the C88 potato, are also being introduced into China. In one study, it was estimated that CWR-derived resistance was responsible for preventing the loss of approximately 30 per cent of the annual yield, where conditions for blight were prevalent.
Wheat varieties such as Veery have benefited from the introduction of genes from rye, a relative of wheat. The beneficial traits inherited include tolerance to extremes of temperature and drought conditions, as well as resistance to a variety of diseases such as wheat rust. These wheat varieties have had a significant impact in the developing world, as well as in developed-world markets such as the US.
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3. University of Arkansas releases two non-GMO soybeans
University of Arkansas, July 23 2013
http://www.agprofessional.com/news/University-of-Arkansas-releases-two-non-GMO-soybeans-216575861.html
Two new conventional soybean varieties from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offer high yields and can be timed for harvest after farmers have completed harvesting their rice crop.
UA 5213C, released in July, is an early maturity group 5 soybean that's ready for harvest in mid to late October, said Pengyin Chen, director of the Division of Agriculture's soybean breeding program. That times it well to follow rice harvest, Chen said.
In field trials, UA 5213C had yields akin to both conventional and Roundup Ready check varieties used for comparison, Chen said. In addition to its high yield, the soybean is resistant to major diseases, including southern stem canker and soybean cyst nematode race 3. It is susceptible to sudden death syndrome.
UA 5612, released in 2012, matures about 5 days later than UA 5213C, but offers even higher yields.
"The number one attraction of UA 5612 is its yield potential. It is consistently high yielding," Chen said. During evaluations within Arkansas from 2005 to 2011, the average yield was 62 bushels an acre. In variety tests in Arkansas and other southern states from 2008 to 2011, UA 5612 yielded 53 bushels an acre.
It is moderately resistant to southern stem canker, sudden death syndrome and soybean mosaic virus Chen said. It is susceptible to root-knot nematode and soybean cyst nematode.
Both the new soybeans are widely adapted to the varying growing conditions in Arkansas and other southern states, Chen said.
Conventional varieties like these two new soybeans offer growers options and have become increasingly desirable as rotations for glyphosate-resistant varieties. Chen said use of conventional soybeans is expanding in Arkansas, mostly using Division of Agriculture varieties.
Conventional varieties are also less expensive than genetically modified soybeans, Chen said, and growers also can earn a $1.50 per bushel premium for non-GMO soybeans. In addition, the Division of Agriculture allows farmers to save seed from their crop for planting the following year.
Foundation seed for UA 5612 is already in the hands of seed dealers and limited quantities are available to farmers, Chen said. Foundation seed for UA 5213C will be available to seed dealers and farmers in 2014.