Genetically Modified Plants

Assessing Safety and Managing Risk

Roger Hull, Graham Head, George T. Tzotzos

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780128226483
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Genetics & Genomics
• Index: Biological Sciences

Genetically Modified Plants, Second Edition, provides an updated roadmap and science-based methodology for assessing the safety of genetic modification technologies, as well as risk assessment approaches from regulators across different agroecosystems. This new edition also includes expanded coverage of technologies used in plant improvement, such as RNA-dependent DNA methylation, reverse breeding, agroinfiltration, and gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR and TALENS. This book is an essential resource for anyone interested in crop improvement, including students and researchers, practitioners in regulatory agencies, and policymakers involved in plant biotechnology risk assessment.

• Provides a roadmap for assessing the safety of genetically modified plants
• Expands coverage of technologies used in plant improvement, such as RNA-dependent DNA methylation, Reverse Breeding and Agro-infiltration
• Introduces new chapters addressing the potential applications and associated risks of new gene editing technologies such as CRISPR and TALENS

Chapter 1: Setting the context: Agriculture and crop/food sustainability

Abstract

This chapter describes the history of agriculture and constraints on crop production, including the potential effects that climate change and population increase will have over the next few decades. By highlighting the constraints on crop production, it sets the scene for the need for new technologies, especially genetic modification and other molecular DNA techniques, to help mitigate them, and provides the background for the risk assessment and management topics described in subsequent chapters.

Keywords

History of agriculture; Constraints on crop production; Abiotic constraints; Biotic constraints; Climate change; Food sustainability

Chapter Outline

• 1. History of crop production
  • 1.1 Development of modern crop production
  • 1.2 Agricultural systems
• 2. Abiotic and biotic constraints on crop production
  • 2.1 Abiotic constraints
  • 2.2 Biotic constraints
  • 2.3 Interactions between abiotic and biotic stresses
• 3. Other constraints: Food security and sustainability
  • 3.1 Population demographics
  • 3.2 Social and cultural considerations
  • 3.3 Policy and economic considerations
• 4. Conclusions
• References

1: History of crop production

1.1: Development of modern crop production^a

Crop production is generally considered to have started during the Neolithic Period when humans moved from being hunter/gathers toward organized societies with food producers and food consumers, though some evidence is emerging of small-scale crop production at least 11 millennia earlier in the Paleolithic Period (Snir et al., 2015). Suitable wild plant species were domesticated by choosing those variants that had desirable properties (e.g., yield, reliability, lack of toxins, and ease of cultivation). Crop production originated in the primary centers of origin of the plant species (Box 1.1) being domesticated.

Box 1.1

Centers of origin of crops

The early domestication of crops occurred in their centers of origin. Vavilov (1935) identified eight primary centers of origin of most of the world’s crops (Box 1.1 Figure 1):

Box 1.1 Figure 1 Vavilov’s (1935) primary centers of origin of the world’s major crops.

I The Chinese Centre is the center for crop species that include rice, buckwheat, soybean, Chinese yam, radish, Chinese cabbage, onion, cucumber, pear, peach, apricot, cherry, walnut, sugarcane, and hemp.

IIa The Indian Centre is the center for crop species such as rice, chickpea, cowpea, eggplant, cucumber radish, taro, yam, mango, orange, sugarcane, coconut palm, sesame, black pepper, and bamboo.

IIb The Indo-Malayan Centre is the center for crop species that include velvet bean, banana, mangosteen, coconut palm, sugarcane, and black pepper.

III The Inner Asiatic Centre is the center for crop species that include wheat, pea, lentil, horse bean chickpea, mustard, flax, cotton, onion, garlic, carrot, pear, almond, grape, and apple.

IV The Asia Minor or Near-Eastern Centre (also known as the Fertile Crescent) is the center for crop species that include wheat (einkorn, durum and common), rye, oats, lentil, lupine, alfalfa, fig, apple, pear, and cherry.

V The Mediterranean Centre includes crop species such as durum wheat, emmer, spelt, pea, lupin, various clovers, flax, oilseed rape, olive, beet, cabbage, turnip, lettuce, parsnip, and hop.

VI The Abyssinian (now Ethiopian) Centre contains crop species such as emmer, barley, pearl millet, cowpea, flax, and coffee.

VII The South Mexican and Central American Centre contains crop species such as maize, common bean, lima bean, winter pumpkin, sweet potato, papaya, cherry, tomato and cacao.

VIII The South Andes region comprises three centers:

VIIIa Peruvian, Ecuadorian, Bolivian Centre contains crop species that include various potato species, lima bean, common bean, tomato, pumpkin, Egyptian cotton and tobacco.

VIIIb The Chilean Centre contains crop species that include common potato and wild strawberry

VIIIc The Brazilian-Paraguayan Centre is important for manioc (cassava), peanut, rubber tree, pineapple, and Brazil nut.

The major crop domestications were in the Fertile Crescent (IV) about 11,000 years before present (BP), at least three separate domestications of rice in China (I) and India (IIa) (c.13,500–9000 BP) (Civáñ et al., 2015), domestication and selection of a natural hybrid of 2 species of Musa (banana) in India (IIa) (c.5000–4000 BP) and the New Guinea Highlands (IIb) (c.5000–c4000 BP), and sub-Saharan Africa (not in the Vavlov list) (5000 to c.4000 BP) (coffee, sorghum, oil palm).

While the primary domestication of the various crops occurred in these centers of origin, there are various other centers of secondary diversification. For instance, banana has been further diversified in the Indo-Malayan region, in East Africa and in West Africa.

The centers of origin and diversification are important sources for genes for plant breeding as they contain the wild species and landraces used by indigenous farmers. There can be specific biosafety considerations for the release of GM crops in these regions.

Over a long period of time, farmers practiced empirical crop breeding by selecting the best variants, cross-fe...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Setting the context: Agriculture and crop/food sustainability
• Chapter 2: Technologies for crop improvement
• Chapter 3: Current progress and future needs of genetically engineered crop plants
• Chapter 4: Principles of risk assessment
• Chapter 5: Evolution of regulatory systems and national biosafety frameworks
• Chapter 6: Molecular characterization of GM plants
• Chapter 7: Risk assessment and management—Human and animal health
• Chapter 8: Risk assessment and management—Environment
• Chapter 9: Risk perception and public attitudes to bioengineered crops
• Chapter 10: The future
• Appendix A: Glossary
• Appendix B: Climate change and global warming: Impacts on crop production
• Appendix C: Details of major biotic constraints
• Appendix D: Genetics and gene expression
• Appendix E: Mutations
• Appendix F: Information required on an application for environmental release of a GMO
• Appendix G: GM food labeling in different countries
• Appendix H: Differences in public uptake of GM foods
• Index