MORE than a decade after the first commercial plantings of genetically modified crops, the same old disagreement rumbles on. On one side stand agribiotech companies, arguing that crops engineered to produce insecticidal proteins or resist herbicides boost yields in an environmentally friendly way. Opposing them are advocacy groups who charge that these crops, or the farming practices they encourage, threaten biodiversity.
As New 杏吧原创 has previously observed (21 January 2006, p 10), 10 years is a long time to be having the same argument. Now the dispute is about to spread onto new and crucial territory. Biotech firms say the next generation of GM crops will not only help maintain yields in the face of climate change but also reduce agriculture鈥檚 sizeable contribution to global warming (see 鈥淕enes for greens鈥�). Such momentous claims demand further investigation. The crops may pose novel risks, and these too need to be scrutinised. All of this will need a shift in the way research into the environmental consequences of new crops is organised.
The best-known environmental test of GM agriculture came from the UK鈥檚 鈥渇arm-scale鈥� evaluations of crops engineered to withstand herbicides. Ecologists studied how the herbicide spraying regimes affected biodiversity 鈥� something of particular concern in a crowded land where wildlife and agriculture exist side by side. After four years and at a cost of around 拢5 million, the first results were released in 2003. Two of the crops reduced farmland biodiversity, while one 鈥� herbicide-tolerant maize 鈥� boosted it (New 杏吧原创, 25 October 2003, p 21).
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This was a remarkable experiment, but it also demonstrates what is wrong with the relationship between regulation and research. The evaluations were commissioned late in the day, when the crops were poised for commercial introduction. It would have been far better to have investigated the issues several years before.
The intensity of the GM wars that gripped Europe in the late 1990s may have taken regulators by surprise, but this time round there is no excuse for not thinking ahead. We know that agribiotech companies are working on crops engineered to tolerate drought and salt, or to extract nitrogen from soils more efficiently. Here the concerns do not relate to chemical spraying or other farming practices; the issue is whether the crops themselves, or relatives with which they might exchange genes, could become invasive species or persistent weeds.
Plants that acquire the ability to take up more nitrogen should not pose much of a problem in natural ecosystems, as they only gain an advantage when nitrogen levels in soil are increased with fertilisers 鈥� though they could become a pest down on the farm. Genes for drought and salt-tolerance are a different matter. They might create highly invasive plants that could monopolise fragile arid or saline ecosystems.
鈥淕enes for drought and salt-tolerance might create highly invasive plants that could monopolise fragile ecosystems鈥�
This does not, however, mean we need dozens more trials of the magnitude of the farm-scale evaluations. Much can be done in smaller experiments which can be run for just a few hundred thousand dollars. Ecologists could identify the wild relatives of engineered crops, acquire baseline data on the factors that limit where they grow, and then run small field experiments to see how things change when they are given genes for tolerance to drought and salty soils.
Some pertinent projects are under way, but budgets are small and across the world there is too little coordination between government and academic scientists, regulators and biotech companies to ensure that research is focused on the traits, genes and crop species that are in the commercial pipeline. Part of the problem is companies鈥� desire to keep their work confidential, but governments share the blame for a failure of joined-up thinking: too often regulators and research funding agencies plough their own furrows.
Finally, we need to recognise that it is the trait that matters, not how the gene responsible gets into a crop. GM technology is not the only option: varieties tolerant to drought and salt are being produced by conventional breeding as well. Existing regulatory frameworks would allow these to be put on the market with barely any consideration to potential ecological risks. That, too, needs to change.
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