engleski

Genes and plants - ten years of commercial GM crops

Plant genetic engineering is a powerful tool for producing crops resistant to herbicides, pests, diseases, and abiotic stress or crops capable of producing new molecules or better quality products. Currently 85 genetically modified (GM) crop lines have been approved for growth in different countries. These cover 15 plant species with significant number of different modified traits. During the first decade, 1996 to 2005, herbicide tolerance has consistently been the dominant trait followed by insect resistance and stacked genes for the two traits. Resistance to herbicide glyphosate is usually achieved by expression of bacterial gene coding for the herbicide insensitive enzyme 5-enolpyruvyl-shikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS). Glufosinate tolerance is most often the result of introduction of Streptomyces gene encoding the enzyme phosphinothricin-N-acetyltransferase (PAT). Almost all current insect resistance traits have been developed using cry genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. In 2005, GM crops were commercially grown by approximately 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries (USA, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Paraguay, India, South Africa, Uruguay, Australia, Mexico, Romania, Philippines, Spain, Colombia, Iran, Honduras, Portugal, Germany, France and Czech Republic). The global area of GM crops increased more than 50 fold during the ten-year period, from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 90 million hectares in 2005. Soybean continued to be the principal GM crop in 2005, occupying 54.4 million has, followed by maize (21.2 million has), cotton (9.8 million has) and canola (4.6 million has). In 2005, herbicide tolerant crops occupied 71% of the global GM area, insect resistant 18%, and crops with the stacked genes 11%. Taking all these global developments in both industrial and developing countries into account, the outlook for the next decade points to continued growth in the global hectarage of GM crops. Beyond the traditional agricultural products of food, feed and fiber, entirely novel products to agriculture will emerge including the production of pharmaceutical products, oral vaccines, specialty and fine chemicals and the use of renewable crop resources to replace non-renewable, polluting, and increasingly expensive fossil fuels.

GMO; GM crops; pest resistance; herbicide resistance

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