Genetically Improved Crops - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 87

nutritional content of major and minor crops to improve many aspects of human and
animal health and well-being.
Barriers to Introduction
Commercialization of the first generation of products of recombinant DNA technol-
ogy was another facet in a long history of human intervention in nature for agricultural
and food production purposes (see McHughen, this volume). There is almost universal
agreement that innovation is essential for sustaining and enhancing agricultural quality
and productivity. There also would be general concurrence that this involves on some
level new, science-based products and processes that contribute reliable methods for
improving quality, productivity, and environmental sustainability. Most of the inno-
vative technologies used in modern agriculture have created little controversy or even
notice by consumers, with the partial exception of the Green Revolution in plant breed-
ing for nitrogen response (Harriss and Stewart, this volume). To most producers and
academic and industrial researchers, biotechnology is seen as offering a new dimension
to innovation, providing efficient and cost-effective means to produce a diverse array of
value-added products and tools. To others it represents an unnecessary, and for some
unnatural, risk at a broad level to our food system and environment and at a very fun-
damental level a risk to our way of life or code of beliefs (see Shome, Chappell, this vol-
ume). Because of the globalization and democratization of knowledge afforded by the
Internet, the cult of the amateur noted by Trewavas (2008) often accords in both society
and politics equal weight to uninformed opinions as to established science.
Given the current regulatory climate for agricultural biotechnology, it is difficult to
imagine many of the previously described traits ever reaching the marketplace. Most
of the crops approved to date demonstrate that the deregulation process is prohibitive
for everyone except well-financed companies whose focus is primarily the large com-
modity crops, as discussed previously. Just one trait from a public institution has suc-
cessfully traversed the regulatory minefields and been translated into a commercially
viable commodity: the viral coat protein protection system initially developed for the
papaya ringspot virus pandemic in Hawaii. Papaya is a major tropical fruit crop in the
Asian region. However, production in many countries is set back by the prevalence of
the PRSV disease as well as postharvest losses. The PRSV-resistant papaya, based on
RNAi suppression of the coat protein expression, literally saved the US$17 million
papaya economy in Hawaii. Though the disease is of significant importance in Taiwan
and other southeast Asian countries, the trait has yet to be approved (see Evanega and
Lynas, this volume).
Rather interestingly it has been reported anecdotally that organic papaya growers
now surround their plots with the transgenic rainbow variety as the PTGS system proves
to be a most effective method to reduce the viral reservoir thus protecting susceptible
varieties through a mechanism that is similar to herd immunity in mammalian systems.