National
Academy Press

Transgenic Plants And World Agriculture

This report was prepared by the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences.

Click here for the full report.

Highlights include:

"Foods can be produced through the use of GM technology that are more nutritious, stable in storage, and in principle health promoting - bringing benefits to consumers in both industrialized and developing nations.

"Dramatic advances are required in food production, distribution and access if we are going to address these needs. Some of these advances will occur from non-GM technologies, but others will come from the advantages offered by GM technologies.

"The benefits from transgenic plants under study include increased flexibility in crop management, decreased dependency on chemical insecticides and soil disturbance, enhanced yields, easier harvesting and higher proportions of the crop available for trading. For the consumer this should lead to decreased cost of food and higher nutritive value.

"It is important to increase yield on land that is already intensively cultivated. However, increasing production is only one part of the equation. Income generation, particularly in low-income areas, together with the more effective distribution of food stocks, are equally, if not more, important. GM technologies are relevant to both these elements of food security.

"Research on transgenic crops, as with conventional plant breeding and selection by farmers, aims selectively to alter, add or remove a character of choice in a plant, bearing in mind regional needs and opportunities. It offers the possibility of not only bringing in desirable characteristics from other varieties of the plant, but also of adding characteristics from other unrelated species.

"Thereafter the transgenic plant becomes a parent for use in traditional breeding. Modification of qualitative and quantitative characteristics, such as the composition of protein, starch, fats or vitamins by modification of metabolic pathways, has already been achieved in some species. Such modifications increase the nutritional status of the foods and may, in some characteristics, help to improve human health by addressing malnutrition and under-nutrition.

"GM technology has also shown its potential to address micro-nutrient deficiencies and thus reduce the national expenditure and resources required to implement current supplementation programs (Texas A&M University 1997). These nutritional improvements have rarely been achieved previously by traditional methods of plant breeding."