GM tech expands with more crops to more countries

Recent developments in genetic modification (GM) technology include a way to prevent the popular Cavendish banana variety from being wiped out by the Fusarium wilt fungus.

GM bananas are only one of the GM crops recently developed. Photo: Elena Koycheva/Unsplash

The Cavendish — which accounts for nearly half of all banana varieties grown in the world and most imports into Europe and the US — can be protected by splicing in genes from banana varieties resistant to the deadly Tropical Race 4 (TR4) strain of the Fusarium oxysporum fungus as well as a gene from a nematode worm.

First identified in Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia in the early 1990s, TR4 has since spread to Africa and now threatens the vast banana plantations of Latin America. Left unchecked, TR4 may well cause the Cavendish to go extinct, threatening the livelihoods of 400 million people around the world who rely on this banana variety as food or as a source of income.

Other recent developments in crop biotechnology listed in the report include GM sugarcane that is resistant to insects and drought, GM apples that do not turn brown, GM canola and safflower that have high levels of oleic acid which has anti-cancer properties.

Similarly, GM potatoes do not bruise easily and, on deep frying, produce less acrylamide, a potentially cancer-causing chemical. GM potatoes are also resistant to late blight disease which caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s and which continues to threaten potato crops worldwide.

Since the first GM crops were planted 23 years ago, no ill effects have been documented; the crops have enjoyed an “unblemished and proven safety record” and have expanded 113-fold from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 191.7 million hectares in 2018.

GM crops have “expanded beyond corn, soybeans, cotton and canola to give more choices for the world’s consumers and food producers”, Paul Teng, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) chair, said. He counted alfalfa, sugar beet, papaya, squash, eggplant, potato and apple among GM crops already in the market. (SciDev.Net)

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