Genetically Improved Crops - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 90

Problems cited for the slow passage of GM crops from experimental to trial to com-
mercial stage include the lack of capacity to negotiate licenses to use genes and research
techniques patented by others, especially for crops with export potential. In addition,
there are difficulties in meeting regulatory requirements and a lack of effective public
commercialization modalities and working extension networks. Biosafety regulations
still have to be enforced in many countries for an effective and purportedly safe use of
genetically engineered crops, especially if their production is meant for the export mar-
ket, whether or not there is evidence of hazard. Intellectual property rights continue to
be a significant barrier in some regions and for some technologies. If the public sector is
going to contribute in tangible ways to technological approaches for food security, the
public research system needs to be optimized for translation in this arena.
Therefore, the actual commercialization of biotech products may have less to do with
technical limitations and more to do with external constraints, primarily the process of
regulatory approval. The flagship of improved nutritional varieties—namely, beta caro-
tene-enhanced rice, commonly referred to as golden rice—despite being under con-
sideration since the late 1990s and subject to a barrage of risk assessments will not be
approved until 2014 at the earliest. Ingo Potrykus, the developer, claims that an unrea-
sonable amount of testing has been required without scientific justification. In a 2010
Nature article he laid the blame solely at the door of the regulatory process: “I therefore
hold the regulation of genetic engineering responsible for the death and blindness of
thousands of children and young mothers.”
Future Directions
As agriculture must adapt to rapidly changing needs and growing conditions, we must
become more effective at producing more on less with limited resources. Only the tools
of biotechnology will allow us to bypass physiological and environmental limitations to
produce sufficient food, feed, fuels, and fiber on ever diminishing arable land to meet ever
increasing demand. Some challenges going forward are technical, as we strive to modify
qualitative (as opposed to quantitative) traits and intricate metabolic pathways and net-
works (as opposed to single genes), and the scientific hurdles are not trivial. However, with
the tools now coming online in the fields of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and bio-
informatics, there is genuinely new potential. For example, tools such as next-generation
sequencing, RNAi, transcription factors, transcription activator-like effector nucle-
ases, mini-chromosomes, combinatorial transformation, epigenetic modification, net-
work engineering, and systems biology will allow us to apply both reductive and holistic
approaches to identify, modify, introgress, and subsequently simultaneously study the
expression and interaction of transgenes on tens of thousands of endogenous genes in elite
germplasm backgrounds. With these newly evolving tools, we are beginning to dissect
the global effects of metabolic engineering on metabolites, enzyme activities, and fluxes.
With rapidly emerging technologies, the increase in our understanding of and ability to