A right royal rumpus

When will agricultural biotechnologies, such as genetically modified (GM) crops, reach Europe? This was the main question at the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC)—the largest of its kind—that took place in September this year in Cologne, Germany. Given that the ABIC was accompanied by a parallel conference organized by critics of GM crops and foods, this is an appropriate question. Most of the European Union (EU) member states have not yet approved the GM crops that are used widely and safely elsewhere in the world. Moreover, although the EU has finally lifted its moratorium on GM crops, and has passed new regulations for growing and marketing GM foods, national politics, legislation and ideological views about consumer and environmental protection have further hampered their use. European consumers remain wary of agricultural biotechnology and its products, as they do not see any direct benefits from GM crops and are, therefore, understandably reluctant to accept them. But it is only a matter of time before GM foods arrive on supermarket shelves across Europe, predicts Ashley O'Sullivan, President and CEO of Ag‐West Bio Inc. (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada). “The reality for legislation to regulate agricultural biotechnology is that the train has left the station and there is no way of going back,” he added. > …to convince the cautious European public, agricultural biotechnology still has to […] offer products that directly benefit consumers But to convince the cautious European public, agricultural biotechnology still has to show that it can do more than increase the returns to farmers, and offer products that directly benefit consumers. The next wave of GM plants, which are currently being developed and tested in academic and industry laboratories around the world, including Europe, may soon do this. A range of new GM crops in the research pipeline will offer direct benefits to …

Genetically modified (GM) crops are now being grown extensively in North and South America and China, although not in Europe. Food produced from these crops has become a part of the normal diet in North and South America and in China, but not in Europe, where contention continues despite the fact that millions of US citizens eat GM soya without any ill effects in a very litigious society, and many Europeans have eaten GM soya while in the US without any adverse consequences. > Why has the British public, who normally so pragmatically welcome scientific advances, resisted the introduction of genetically modified crops? European consumers' continuous and ardent opposition to GM crops and foods has had serious repercussions for plant research, for the commercial development of new crops and, most importantly, for developing countries that could benefit most from GM crops. Several countries in Africa and elsewhere have resisted growing such crops, mainly for fear of being unable to export them to the European market ( The Economist , 2002). It is therefore worthwhile to investigate what actually went wrong in the debate about GM food and crops in Europe and how these foods have earned such a bad name. Such an analysis could not only help to overcome public fears of this technology, but also help scientists and policy makers to address similar concerns in the future, such as the growing debate over nanotechnology. The concerns of European consumers about the potential health and environmental threats of GM crops have resulted in an unprecedented effort to investigate those anxieties and communicate with the wider public, particularly in the UK, where the use of public consultation has been extensively developed. The first of these initiatives was the extensive Farm Scale Evaluations of three GM crops (herbicide‐resistant beet, oil seed rape and maize), whose …

The application of gene drives to achieve public health goals, such as the suppression of Anopheles gambiae populations, or altering their ability to sustain Plasmodium spp. infections, has received much attention from researchers. If successful, this genetic tool can contribute greatly to the wellbeing of people in regions severely affected by malaria. However, engineered gene drives are a product of genetic engineering, and the experience to date, gained through the deployment of genetically engineered (GE) crops, is that GE technology has had difficulty receiving public acceptance in Africa, a key region for the deployment of gene drives. The history of GE crop deployment in this region provides good lessons for the deployment of gene drives as well. GE crops have been in commercial production for 24 years, since the planting of the first GE soybean crop in 1996. During this time, regulatory approvals and farmer adoption of these crops has grown rapidly in the Americas, and to a lesser extent in Asia. Their safety has been recognized by numerous scientific organizations. Economic and health benefits have been well documented in the countries that have grown them. However, only one transgenic crop event is being grown in Europe, and only in two countries in that region. Europe has been extremely opposed to GE crops, due in large part to the public view of agriculture that opposes “industrial” farming. This attitude is reflected in a highly precautionary regulatory and policy environment, which has highly influenced how African countries have dealt with GE technology and are likely to be applied to future genetic technologies, including gene drives. Furthermore, a mistrust of government regulatory agencies, the publication of scientific reports claiming adverse effects of GE crops, the involvement of corporations as the first GE crop developers, the lack of identifiable consumer benefit, and low public understanding of the technology further contributed to the lack of acceptance. Coupled with more emotionally impactful messaging to the public by opposition groups and the general tendency of negative messages to be more credible than positive ones, GE crops failed to gain a place in European agriculture, thus influencing African acceptance and government policy. From this experience, the following lessons have been learned that would apply to the deployment of gene drives, in Africa:It will be important to establish trust in those who are developing the technology, as well as in those who are making regulatory decisions. Engagement of the community, where those who are involved are able to make genuine contributions to the decision-making process, are necessary to achieve that trust. The use of tools to facilitate participatory modeling could be considered in order to enhance current community engagement efforts.Trusted, accurate information on gene drives should be made available to the general public, journalists, and scientists who are not connected with the field. Those sources of information should also be able to summarize and analyze important scientific results and emerging issues in the field in order to place those developments in the proper context. Engagement should involve more opportunities for participation of stakeholders in conceptualizing, planning, and decision-making.Diversifying the source of funding for gene drive research and development, particularly by participation of countries and regional bodies, would show that country or regional interests are represented.Efforts by developers and neutral groups to provide the public and decisionmakers with a more thorough understanding of the benefits and risks of this technology, especially to local communities, would help them reach more informed decisions.A better understanding of gene drive technology can be fostered by governments, as part of established biosafety policy in several African countries. Developers and neutral groups could also be helpful in increasing public understanding of the technology of genetic engineering, including gene drives.Effective messaging to balance the messaging of groups opposed to gene drives is needed. These messages should be not only factual but also have emotional and intuitive appeal.

BackgroundThe safety assessment of foods and feeds from genetically modified (GM) crops includes the comparison of key characteristics, such as crop composition, agronomic phenotype and observations from animal feeding studies compared to conventional counterpart varieties that have a history of safe consumption, often including a near isogenic variety. The comparative compositional analysis of GM crops has been based on targeted, validated, quantitative analytical methods for the key food and feed nutrients and antinutrients for each crop, as identified by Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). As technologies for untargeted metabolomic methods have evolved, proposals have emerged for their use to complement or replace targeted compositional analytical methods in regulatory risk assessments of GM crops to increase the number of analyzed metabolites.Aim of ReviewThe technical opportunities, challenges and strategies of including untargeted metabolomics analysis in the comparative safety assessment of GM crops are reviewed. The results from metabolomics studies of GM and conventional crops published over the last eight years provide context to enable the discussion of whether metabolomics can materially improve the risk assessment of food and feed from GM crops beyond that possible by the Codex-defined practices used worldwide for more than 25 years.Key Scientific Concepts of ReviewPublished studies to date show that environmental and genetic factors affect plant metabolomics profiles. In contrast, the plant biotechnology process used to make GM crops has little, if any consequence, unless the inserted GM trait is intended to alter food or feed composition. The nutritional value and safety of food and feed from GM crops is well informed by the quantitative, validated compositional methods for list of key analytes defined by crop-specific OECD consensus documents. Untargeted metabolic profiling has yet to provide data that better informs the safety assessment of GM crops than the already rigorous Codex-defined quantitative comparative assessment. Furthermore, technical challenges limit the implementation of untargeted metabolomics for regulatory purposes: no single extraction method or analytical technique captures the complete plant metabolome; a large percentage of metabolites features are unknown, requiring additional research to understand if differences for such unknowns affect food/feed safety; and standardized methods are needed to provide reproducible data over time and laboratories.

An extensive safety assessment process exists for genetically-engineered (GE) crops. The assessment includes an evaluation of the introduced protein as well as the crop containing the protein with the goal of demonstrating the GE crop is “as-safe-as” non-GE crops in the food supply. One of the evaluations for GE crops is to assess the expressed protein for allergenic potential. Currently, no single factor is recognized as a predictor for protein allergenicity. Therefore, a weight-of-the-evidence approach, which accounts for a variety of factors and approaches for an overall assessment of allergenic potential, is conducted. This assessment includes an evaluation of the history of exposure and safety of the gene(s) source; protein structure (e.g. amino acid sequence identity to human allergens); stability of the protein to pepsin digestion in vitro; heat stability of the protein; glycosylation status; and when appropriate, specific IgE binding studies with sera from relevant clinically allergic subjects. Since GE crops were first commercialized over 20 years ago, there is no proof that the introduced novel protein(s) in any commercialized GE food crop has caused food allergy.

EMBO Reports (2019) e48036 The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in the EU remains a highly polemic issue. The only GM crop event that is currently authorised is the insect‐resistant maize “MON810”. The GM potato variety “Amflora” with improved tuber starch composition was approved for cultivation in 2010, but later withdrawn. One of the main reasons that not more GM crops are authorised for cultivation is a regulatory gridlock with a recurring inability to reach a qualified majority in the designated committee for either approval or rejection [1]. Several EU member states experience domestic pressure against adoption of GM crops [2], [3], [4]. The European Commission (EC) therefore developed legislation—the Directive EU 2015/412, adopted by the European Parliament (EP) in 2015—to give member states the possibility to restrict or prohibit cultivation of authorised GM crops in their territory (opt‐out mechanism). The request to exclude a particular GM event from cultivation may be communicated to the EC after risk assessment, or after authorisation provided that the restriction is in conformity with the EU law, reasoned, proportional, non‐discriminatory and based on compelling grounds (Article 26b(3) of Directive 2015/412). To date, 17 member states and two autonomous regions have used this possibility. In parallel, the EC also proposed an analogous mechanism for the import of GM food and …

Recently, genetically modified (GM) technology has been successfully used to reduce the cost and to enhance the profit in agriculture. Although GM technology brings many benefits for non-food crops, people still misgive the effects of GM products for the health and the environment. Furthermore, GM crops might affect food (non-GM) crops in the open environment. Hence, how to find strategies for the coexistence of GM and non-GM crops are become a popular issue. One of the strategies is to determine a befitting distance between GM and non-GM crops to reduce the cross-pollination occurred by predicting the rate of cross-pollination. Owing to most of the existing methods for predicting the cross-pollination rates of non-GM crops are only based on the distance between GM and non-GM crops. To counter this problem, we propose a hybrid method, which is composed of radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), support vector machine (SVM) and bootstrap, to apply in this issue. The proposed method includes three specificities. (a) The proposed method reduces the effect of imbalance class problem. (b) The proposed method uses more variables, which are effect the cross-pollination rates, for prediction to enhance the prediction accuracy. (c) The proposed method searches relevant samples to reduce execution time and enhance the prediction accuracy. The results show the performance of our method is better than the existing methods in terms of the root mean square error (RMSE) in prediction and the correlation coefficient between the actual and the predicted cross-pollination rates.

Comment on ‘A novel 5‐enolpyruvoylshikimate‐3‐phosphate (EPSP) synthase transgene for glyphosate resistance stimulates growth and fecundity in weedy rice (<i><scp>O</scp>ryza sativa</i>) without herbicide’ by Wang <i>et al</i>. (2014)

Reluctance within the European Union to accept genetically modified crops may hinder the benefits of this technology reaching the developing world

New advances in crop genetic engineering can significantly pace up the development of genetically improved varieties with enhanced yield, nutrition and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Genetically modified (GM) crops can act as powerful complement to the crops produced by laborious and time consuming conventional breeding methods to meet the worldwide demand for quality foods. GM crops can help fight malnutrition due to enhanced yield, nutritional quality and increased resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses. However, several biosafety issues and public concerns are associated with cultivation of GM crops developed by transgenesis, i.e., introduction of genes from distantly related organism. To meet these concerns, researchers have developed alternative concepts of cisgenesis and intragenesis which involve transformation of plants with genetic material derived from the species itself or from closely related species capable of sexual hybridization, respectively. Recombinase technology aimed at site-specific integration of transgene can help to overcome limitations of traditional genetic engineering methods based on random integration of multiple copy of transgene into plant genome leading to gene silencing and unpredictable expression pattern. Besides, recently developed technology of genome editing using engineered nucleases, permit the modification or mutation of genes of interest without involving foreign DNA, and as a result, plants developed with this technology might be considered as non-transgenic genetically altered plants. This would open the doors for the development and commercialization of transgenic plants with superior phenotypes even in countries where GM crops are poorly accepted. This review is an attempt to summarize various past achievements of GM technology in crop improvement, recent progress and new advances in the field to develop improved varieties aimed for better consumer acceptance.

It is well established that pollen-mediated gene flow among natural plant populations depends on a complex interaction between the spatial distribution of pollen sources and the short- and long-distance components of pollen dispersal. Despite this knowledge, spatial isolation strategies proposed in Europe to ensure the harvest purity of conventional crops are based on distance from the nearest genetically modified (GM) crop and on empirical data from two-plot experiments. Here, we investigate the circumstances under which the multiplicity of pollen sources over the landscape should be considered in strategies to contain GM crops. We simulated pollen dispersal over eighty 6 × 6 km simulated landscapes differing in field characteristics and in amount of GM and conventional maize. Pollen dispersal was modelled either via a Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG, currently used for European coexistence studies) or a bivariate Student (2Dt) kernel. These kernels differ in their amount of short- and long-distance dispersal. We used linear models to analyse the impact of local and landscape variables on impurity rates (i.e. proportion of seeds sired by pollen from a transgenic crop) in conventional fields and quantified their increase due to dispersal from other than the closest GM crops. The average impurity rate over a landscape increased linearly with the proportion of GM maize over that landscape. The increase was twice as fast using the NIG kernel and was governed by the short-distance dispersal component. Variation in impurity rates largely depended on the distance to the closest GM crop and the size of the receptor field. However, impurity rates were generally underestimated when only dispersal from the closest GM field was considered. Synthesis and applications. Distance to the closest GM crop had most impact on impurity rates in conventional fields. However, impurity rates also depended on intermediate- to long-distance dispersal from distant GM crops. Therefore, isolation distances as currently defined will probably not allow long-term coexistence of GM and conventional crops, especially as the proportion of GM crops grown increases. We suggest strategies to account for this impact of long-distance dispersal.

Genetically-modified (GM) crops presently are central components of pest management strategies for several important crops worldwide. GM crops include insect-resistant varieties (expressing transgenes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or from plant species other than the GM crop, though only the former varieties are commercially available), and herbicide-tolerant varieties (which tolerate post-emergent applications of particular herbicides). This chapter examines potential and known impacts of GM crops on egg parasitoids. Egg parasitoids can be affected by insect-active toxins or proteins produced by insect-resistant GM crops, or by herbicides applied to herbicide-tolerant crops. A review of the literature showed that very little research has addressed the impacts of GM crops on egg parasitoids, compared to the research on larval parasitoids or predatory insects. The amount and focus of research involving egg parasitoids, though, may be subject to existing factual prejudices: (i) the presence of toxins from insect-resistant varieties in herbivore eggs used as hosts by egg parasitoids is improbable, and (ii) the target of herbicide-tolerant varieties is weeds, by way of herbicide applications. However, egg parasitoids can be affected by GM crops through infrequently explored, direct or indirect pathways, such as exposure to GM crop toxins in honeydew or nectars, or pauperization of host populations in insect-resistant crops or of flowering plant communities in herbicide-tolerant crops. These pathways of GM crop effects on egg parasitoids are likely the most important, but have not been adequately addressed. A fuller understanding of any effects of GM crops on egg parasitoids is particularly significant in the context of analyses pointing to the importance of movement of natural enemy populations among crops and between seasons within a landscape, for pest management and biological control at regional scales.

The genetic modification of crop plants from the methodology involved in their production through to the current debate on their use in agriculture are reviewed. Techniques for plant transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens and particle bombardment, and for the selection of transgenic plants using marker genes are described. The benefits of currently available genetically modified (GM) crops in reducing waste and agrochemical use in agriculture, and the potential of the technology for further crop improvement in the future are discussed. The legal requirements for containment of novel GM crops and the roles of relevant regulatory bodies in ensuring that GM crops and food are safe are summarized. Some of the major concerns of the general public regarding GM crops and food: segregation of GM and non-GM crops and cross-pollination between GM crops and wild species, the use of antibiotic resistance marker genes, the prevention of new allergens being introduced in to the food chain and the relative safety of GM and non-GM foods are considered. Finally, the current debate on the use of GM crops in agriculture and the need for the government, scientists and industry to persevere with the technology in the face of widespread hostility is studied.

Crop biotechnology and the African farmer

Globally, food-producing animals consume 70 to 90% of genetically engineered (GE) crop biomass. This review briefly summarizes the scientific literature on performance and health of animals consuming feed containing GE ingredients and composition of products derived from them. It also discusses the field experience of feeding GE feed sources to commercial livestock populations and summarizes the suppliers of GE and non-GE animal feed in global trade. Numerous experimental studies have consistently revealed that the performance and health of GE-fed animals are comparable with those fed isogenic non-GE crop lines. United States animal agriculture produces over 9 billion food-producing animals annually, and more than 95% of these animals consume feed containing GE ingredients. Data on livestock productivity and health were collated from publicly available sources from 1983, before the introduction of GE crops in 1996, and subsequently through 2011, a period with high levels of predominately GE animal feed. These field data sets, representing over 100 billion animals following the introduction of GE crops, did not reveal unfavorable or perturbed trends in livestock health and productivity. No study has revealed any differences in the nutritional profile of animal products derived from GE-fed animals. Because DNA and protein are normal components of the diet that are digested, there are no detectable or reliably quantifiable traces of GE components in milk, meat, and eggs following consumption of GE feed. Globally, countries that are cultivating GE corn and soy are the major livestock feed exporters. Asynchronous regulatory approvals (i.e., cultivation approvals of GE varieties in exporting countries occurring before food and feed approvals in importing countries) have resulted in trade disruptions. This is likely to be increasingly problematic in the future as there are a large number of "second generation" GE crops with altered output traits for improved livestock feed in the developmental and regulatory pipelines. Additionally, advanced techniques to affect targeted genome modifications are emerging, and it is not clear whether these will be encompassed by the current GE process-based trigger for regulatory oversight. There is a pressing need for international harmonization of both regulatory frameworks for GE crops and governance of advanced breeding techniques to prevent widespread disruptions in international trade of livestock feedstuffs in the future.