Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 7.2.
Pros and cons of substantial changes in plant compositions (second-generation plants; plants
with output traits, or biofortifi ed plants).
Pros
Cons
More advantages for human nutrition (meet
requirements; e.g. fatty acids, minerals, vitamins,
etc.) than for animal nutrition
Plant breeding takes a long time (longer than the
development of food/feed additives)
Many feed additives are available for animal nutrition
Lower content of undesirable substances
High amounts of food/feed may be necessary to
meet requirements
Improvement of properties of food/feed
Table 7.3
. Examples of GM plants with improved characteristics intended to provide nutritional benefi ts
(biofortifi ed plants). (From EFSA, 2008.)
Plant/species
Altered characteristic
Transgene/mechanism
Maize
Improved amino acid profi le
Various enzymes
Vitamin C
Dehydroascorbate reductase
Bioavailable iron
Ferritin and phytase
Fumonisin
De-esterase and de-aminase
Potatoes
Starch
ADP glucose pyrophosphorylase
Solanine
Antisensesterol glycotransferase
Rapeseed
Vitamin E
Gamma-Tocopheryltransferase
-Carotene
Phytoene-synthase
Linoleic and/or linolenic acids
Various desaturases
Rice
-Carotene
Phytoene-synthetase and -desaturase,
lycopene cyclase
Iron
Ferritin, metallothionein, phytase
Soybean
Oleic acid
Suppression of desaturase
Stearidonic acid
Various desaturases
et al
., 2003; ILSI, 2007; EFSA, 2008, 2011;
see Chapter 5) by:
in vitro
studies;
studies with animal models to determine
the bioavailability;
ei cacy trial with animals; and
ef ectivity studies with target animals/
humans.
Final trial for evaluating the nutritional,
health, agricultural, societal, environ-
mental and economic aspects of bioforti-
i ed food in the community.
Similar steps seem to be necessary in animal
nutrition. Experimental designs for such
studies are discussed in Chapter 5 and are
described in detail by Flachowsky and
Böhme (2005), ILSI (2007), EFSA (2008)
and Llorente
et al
. (2011).
Crops can also be genetically modii ed to
produce oils, starch, i bre, protein or other
substances useful for food/feed and
industrial processes (McKeon, 2003).
Generally, such substances are mainly
extracted from the crops and so-called
co-products (e.g. soybean meal, rapeseed
meal, cottonseed meal) could be available for
animal nutrition. In general, extracted
King (2002) proposed a three-step process
for the nutritional assessment of biofortii ed
food from such plants in human nutrition:
Test the bioavailability of newly expres-
sed nutrient(s) or nutrient(s) expressed
in higher amounts.
Feeding trial(s) to test the ei cacy of the
biofortii ed food for improving the
nutrition and health of the target
population.
