Geoscience Reference
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Conventional tillage
Conservation tillage
No-till
FIGURe 6.2 The gross global warming potential (GWP) for
conventional, conservation and no-till agriculture.
the crops and the weeds. The main purpose of the herbicide-
resistant plants is to reduce the need for tillage, finally providing
protection to nearby environments through reduced erosion and
enhanced soil sequestration. For example, the GM herbicide-
resistant Round up Ready TM soybean accounted for up to 95%
of no-till areas in the United States of America (USA) and in
Argentina, leading to the sequestration of 63,859 million tonnes
of CO 2 (Kleter et  al., 2008). HT crops allow farmers to kill
only the weeds avoiding the greenhouse gas intensive process
of weed control by traditional tillage, finally leading to more
soil carbon sequestration. No-till agriculture, in addition to car-
bon sequestration, reduces the consumption of fuel to operate
equipment, thereby reducing CO 2 emissions. The gross global
warming potential (GWP) for no-till agriculture is drastically
lower than both traditional and conservation tillage (Figure 6.2).
Reduction of fuel usage due to the application of biotechnol-
ogy amounted to savings of about 962 million kg of CO 2 emit-
ted in 2005, while the adoption of reduced tillage or no-tillage
practices led to the reduction of 40.43 kg/ha CO 2 emissions due
to less fuel usage, respectively. Therefore, in terms of carbon
sequestration and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear
that GM HT crops are beneficial for climate change mitigation.
6.5 Biotechnology for crop adaptation
In addition to the climate change mitigation strategies, it is
equally important to give attention to the various adaptation
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