2. 91 percent of all GE crops planted around the world belong to what corporation? Monsanto Comapny Monsanto Comapny 3. Why was Dr.Sarah Hake opposed to lumping transgenic genes into one category? One could actually have a transgenic plant that didn’t include the …
View World Geo 5_7_2.docx from PSYCHOLOGY GE350.5.1 at Ashworth College. Part 1 of 2 - 80.0/ 100.0 Points Question 1 of 40 5.0/ 5.0 Points What is …
A vast majority of consumers around the world is against GE foods and crop as GE has been associated with health risks, loss of biodiversity, increased use of toxic weed killers and other environmental problems. 85% of GE crops are concentrated in just 3 countries I-e United States, Argentina, and Canada. Globally G.E crops cover less than 1% ...
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Examples of GM crops include corn varieties containing a gene for a bacterial pesticide that kills larval pests, and soybeans with an inserted gene that renders them resistant to weed-killers such as Roundup.
Ecological Concerns. In addition to potential food safety risks, critics of GM crops have raised concerns about their potential adverse ecological effects. First, if GM crops cross-breed with wild relatives, the foreign transgenes could “contaminate” the natural ecosystem.
Genetically Modified (GM) crops offer improved yields, enhanced nutritional value, longer shelf life, and resistance to drought, frost, or insect pests.
In the laboratory, scientists grow the new corn plant to ensure it has adopted the desired trait (insect resistance). If successful, scientists first grow and monitor the new corn plant (now called Bt corn because it contains a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis) in greenhouses and then in small field tests before moving it into larger field tests. GMO plants go through in-depth review and tests before they are ready to be sold to farmers.
To produce a GMO plant, scientists first identify what trait they want that plant to have, such as resistance to drought, herbicides, or insects. Then, they find an organism (plant, animal, or microorganism) that already has that trait within its genes. In this example, scientists wanted to create insect-resistant corn to reduce the need to spray pesticides. They identified a gene in a soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which produces a natural insecticide that has been in use for many years in traditional and organic agriculture.
1990s The first wave of GMO produce created through genetic engineering becomes available to consumers: summer squash, soybeans, cotton, corn, papayas, tomatoes, potatoes, and canola. Not all are still available for sale.
Next, scientists use tools to insert the gene into the DNA of the plant. By inserting the Bt gene into the DNA of the corn plant, scientists gave it the insect resistance trait.
2015 FDA approves an application for the first genetic modification in an animal for use as food, a genetically engineered salmon.
After scientists developed genetic engineering in the 1970s, they were able to make similar changes in a more specific way and in a shorter amount of time. YouTube. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
1986 The federal government establishes the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology. This policy describes how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) work together to regulate the safety of GMOs.
Sorghum. Sorghum is the fifth most important cereal crop worldwide. It is drought and heat tolerant and thus an important crop in arid regions where major cereals do not produce sufficient yields. Consumption of sorghum, however, has decreased considerably in many African countries, especially in urban areas.
The rundown: Corn is the most produced grain in the world. It's a staple food for the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, and is a great source of carbohydrates, protein, iron, vitamin B, and minerals. Plus it is being used more and more for ethanol.
Annual Production 2008: 110,128,298 tons. Average Yield 2008: 13.5 tons/hectare. The rundown: Sweet potatoes are another crop native to South America that is now majorly produced by China. They are only distantly related to regular potatoes, and in the U.S. they are often confused with yams.
The rundown: Potatoes are the number one non-grain food product. Originally grown in the Andes, the Spanish introduced Europe to the potato in the 16th century and the starchy crop hasn't looked back since. China is now the largest potato-producer worldwide.
Annual Production 2008: 230,952,636 tons. Average Yield 2008: 2.4 tons/hectare. The rundown: Soybeans are on double duty as both nutritious for humans -- with significant amino acids, protein and oil -- and for soil as a natural fertilizer. It produces twice as much protein per acre as any other major vegetable crop.
Cuisine varies greatly around the world, but the basic ingredients that sustain humans are pretty similar. We eat a lot of corn, wheat, rice and other simple crops.
The rundown: Rice may be even more important than corn as a food crop, since corn is used for other purposes outside consumption. Thus, rice is the source of more than 1/5th of all calories consumed by humans. It may also be the thirstiest crop: according to the U.N., farmers need at least 2,000 liters of water to make one kilogram of rice.
Most European, American (both North and Latin American), Asian and Pacific countries have seen a much larger increase in cereal yields relative to area used for production. For many, changes in the arable land have been minimal (or have declined). This is an important contrast to Africa where results are more mixed.
Data on yields of permanent crops are not as reliable as those for temporary crops either because most of the area information may correspond to planted area, as for grapes, or because of the scarcity and unreliability of the area figures reported by the countries, as for example for cocoa and coffee.' 4.
Although there are a few exceptions–notably across Sub-Saharan Africa, the continued increase in cereal yields across the world has been the major driver of total cereal production. This has inevitably allowed us to ‘spare’ land we would have otherwise had to convert for cereal production.
However, if global average cereal yields were to have remained at their 1961 levels, we see the amount of additional land (in blue) which we would have had to convert to arable land if we were to achieve the same levels of cereal production. This ‘spared’ land amounts to 1.26 billion hectares in 2014– roughly equal to the area of Mexico and Europe combined.
Most of our improvements in cereal production have arisen from improvements in yield. The average cereal yield has increased by 175 percent since 1961.
Since 1960, yields in sugar beet have more than doubled, rising from 30 tonnes to more than than 80 tonnes per hectare.
This trade-off between land use for agriculture and yields is very clearly exemplified in a comparison between cereal production in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Expansion of cereal production has followed very different paths in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.#N#Land use for cereal production in South Asia has increased by less than 20 percent since 1961, meanwhile cereal yields have more than tripled – which meant that much more food could be produced in South Asia without an equivalent extension of the agricultural land. This is in strong contrast to Sub-Saharan Africa where the area of land used for cereal production has more than doubled since 1961 and yields have only increased by 80 percent.#N#Click to open interactive version
Simple as that,” said Dennis Gonsalves, the scientist who developed the GMO papaya. The papaya ringspot virus nearly wiped the crop out. The virus first hit Hawaii in the 1940s and by the 1990s had reached almost every area that grows papaya. Production fell 50 percent between 1993 and 2006.
Thankfully, Gonsalves, a Hawaiian-born scientist at Cornell University, developed a genetically modified papaya, known as the Rainbow papaya, designed to be resistant to the virus. Gonsalves and his team planted a trial of the Rainbow papaya on the island of Puna. Within 11 months, the non-GMO papaya became infected with the virus.
Within two years, more than half of all the papaya grown on Hawaii was GMO. A decade later, GM papaya accounted for over 90 percent of papaya production.