Jennifer Marohasy

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GM Cotton More Water Efficient: A Note from David Tribe

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Preliminary results from CSIRO research in Narrabri have shown that genetically modified insect-resistant cotton may also be more water efficient.*

Two years of field experiments by CSIRO Plant Industry’s Mr Dirk Richards and Mr Stephen Yeates, show that under normal full irrigation, Bollgard® II cotton used ten per cent less water than an equivalent conventional variety and had higher yields.

Bollgard® II makes up most of the Australian cotton crop and has reduced pesticide use by up to 80 per cent.

Research is now optimising agronomic management of Bollgard® II as it tends to produce bolls earlier than conventional cotton because insect damage does not delay early crop growth.

Bollgard® II and conventional cotton extract soil water at a similar rate, but Bollgard® II has a more compact growing season so uses less water overall for the same or higher yields.

To read more click here: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/gm-technology-improves-water-use.html

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* This text was provided by David Tribe.

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Comments

  1. roger kalla says

    Interesting stuff coming out of Narrabri. It is further evidence that technological ‘fixes’ to different kind of stresses that affect yields and productivity of our crops plants actually can have synergistic effects.

    Insect protected crops that need to devote less resources to defend themselves against attack from insects can devote a larger proportion of their energy to harvest water efficiently.

    This is a good example where the seemingly reductionistic approach of fixing one problem actually has a profound effect on the whole plant physiology which allows in this case the genetically engineered cotton plant to increase it water use efficiency.

    So by adding a single gene to cotton ( using reductionistic GM technology) we get environmental benefits in both reduced pesticide use by 80% and a more efficient use of water.

    Now that is something Greenpeace should consider when they want the States to continue with their bans on GM crops.

  4. Raven says

    I think genetics is the wave of the future. Having said that, extreme caution must be taken when modifying crops to ensure that ill-effects are not propagated. Has anyone seen “The Future of Food”, “Genetically Modified Food – Panacea or Poison”, or “We Become Silent”? They are some good documentaries on some of the shortcomings of genetically modified food crops. I think that at the very least, current genetically modified foods should be labelled as such. The real scary part is the cross-pollination of genetically modified crops and the attempts from the likes of dirtbag corporations, such as Monsanto, to own a crop from seed to consumption and thus monopolizing entire species via their gene patent. I think the politics and implimentations of genetic modification needs to be hammered out more precisely and also needs to be more well thought-out before being propagated into the environment.

  5. detribe says

    Here is a vivid factual illustration of the evil consequences that Raven muses about: (But only in America)
    http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19740

    GM crops saving farm economy from drought

    – HEARTLAND INSTITUTE, By James M. Taylor, October 1, 2006

    An August 11 federal government crop report shows biotechnology is saving the Midwestern farm economy from devastation in the wake of this summer’s prolonged drought.

    The report projects 10.98 billion bushels of corn production this year, up from 10.74 billion bushels projected in the federal government’s July forecast. The report also projects a soybean crop that will come within 5 percent of last year’s record. The August forecast for the two crops is striking because severe drought ravaged the Midwest between the July and August forecasts.

    “The biotechnology has improved corn and soybeans to be able to withstand some of the Mother Nature pressures that we have gotten,” said Kevin Dahlman, president of Dahlco Seeds in Cokato, Minnesota. Crop losses due to a similar drought would have been substantial as recently as a decade ago, Dahlman added.

    Genetically enhanced seeds account for 61 percent of this year’s corn crop and 89 percent of this year’s soybean crop.

    “If we look at what scientists in the United States and elsewhere have already developed, and what they currently are developing in the research pipeline, it is genuinely remarkable,” said Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the Washington, DC-based Competitive Enterprise Institute.

    “We have to be cautiously optimistic, though, since developing a product that works is only half the battle,” Conko warned. “All around the world, important biotech advances are being stymied by bad regulation and opposition by radical greens.”

    Meanwhile back in Australia farmers dont have the luxury of having to worry about such thing because benign well informed state governments are protecting them from the evil seed corporations. Except in Queensland and NSW where the vile cotton companies have bribed the State Premiers to turn a blind eye while the seedcos rape and pillage the rural bumkins on the Darlings Downs, who foolishly, season after season lay back and think of England.

  8. detribe says

    But on the other hand, a current example of why we should alays be sceptical about preliminary results
    News of the Week
    GENETICS:
    Pollen Contamination May Explain Controversial Inheritance
    Elizabeth Pennisi

    Eighteen months ago, plant researchers shook the foundations of genetics with a gene that seemed to defy the basic rules of inheritance. Arabidopsis plants carrying only mutant versions of the gene, called HOTHEAD, somehow gave rise to progeny carrying a wild-type allele supposedly missing from both parents. These startling results led Susan Lolle and Robert Pruitt, plant geneticists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and their colleagues to propose that the plant’s cells carried a hidden stash of genomic information, with the memory of the wild-type gene sequence encoded in RNA. ..

    The work, reported in the 25 March 2005 issue of Nature, stunned plant biologists…

    But has the whole episode been much ado about nothing? Yesterday, in an online letter published by Nature…several colleagues argued that undetected contamination–wild-type pollen that accidentally fertilized plants considered to be self-fertilizing–may have “reintroduced” old versions of the HOTHEAD gene. “Contamination has always been the simplest explanation,” says Luca Comai, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis. “I would bet 100 against 1 that it’s all explained by pollen contamination.”…continues

    Science 29 September 2006:
    Vol. 313. no. 5795, p. 1864
    DOI: 10.1126/science.313.5795.1864

  9. detribe says

    Yes Raven, you mention both sides of an issue, but have still left much of one side out.

    My point is it’s often forgotten thre is a Hidden Cost of Saying No, first made clear by William Blake -in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell- via Freeman Dyson in 1974.

    http://www.dynamist.com/tfaie/bibliographyArticles/dyson1.html

    (Both Freeman and Willian are pretty interesting charcters if you read their CVs)

    Stopping innovation for so called precationary reasons is a real mixture of heaven and hell. Delays in vitamin A enriched GM rice for example argubly cause the unnecessary deaths of 100s to less than 2000 children a day of delay. There is the possibility to consider that your promoting hell.

    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/05/tragedy-of-delaying-golden-rice.html

    Also remember comventional crops have proven hazards that or much greater that the hypotheticals people worry about
    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/choose-your-natural-plant-poison.html

    For example manure/sewage contamination in spinach ah just this last weeks sent 1000 people to hosptital and killed one persomn, and that from a company dedicated to healthy “Natural” foods.

    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/deadly-spinach-gm-free-but-not-ecoli.html

    Also conventional wisdom can be wrong: Banning DDT was all the vogue, but it took a decade of argument and thousands of unneeded malaria cases to turn this around: the hell of an attempt to ban DDT completed was thousands of deaths, and this mistake has only just been reversed. Sadly those who made the mistake still largely dont want to know about it- thats a real problem of human nature.

    http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/print.html

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FLAC.20060923.COWENT23%2FTPStory%2FComment&ord=1159485588210&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true

    One of the links you gave is a bit flaky, and I the the following wiki’s are a better more balanced place to start: there certain intrinsic contradictions in the GMO wili you mention, but its good in parts

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenic_plants

  10. detribe says

    wili was a typo, sorry, I meant wiki. But maybe “wili” is we should call all bad wiki till they discover a real neutral point of view thruoghout the text.

    My point about contradictions in the the category GMO food/crop in its usually used sense is that it is a logically and factually misleading criterion for realistic risk assessment. It is process based rather that plant outcome based.

    For instance if you recreate a parental non GM plant using GM methods it becomes a regulated GM entity in some juridictions. Far better to subject all new varieties of crop entering the food supply to the sames rules for safety assessment. (as for example argued in

    NAS Report- Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects (2004) by Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) Institute of Medicine (IOM) Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR) Board on Life Sciences (BLS)), where a logical definition of genetically modified is used (including all genetically novel varieties). This report is usually available here (link dead at the moment)

    http://www.nap.edu/books/0309092094/html/
    And is Discussed here
    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/05/scientific-evidence-from-comprehensive.html

    Also for completeness of discussion you should try the Full Monty on GM crop safety assurance:
    http://gmopundit2.blogspot.com/2006/05/full-monty-on-animal-feeding-trials-of.html

  11. Schiller Thurkettle says

    The interesting thing about this thread, and about the media at large, is that there isn’t more attention about this. With water shortages, ten percent is HUGE.

    But of course! Solving water shortages isn’t what NGOs are all about, and it’s not scary, so the press doesn’t care.

    It’s ho hum, progress as usual. Let’s just make sure developing nations don’t get it. If they developed, that lovely flow of aid money would be shut off and the NGOs would have to look for that lovely money somewhere else.

  12. Raven says

    Well, you can’t just ignore obvious dangers. Once you let out a new species, you can’t just take it back. We’re talking about the food we consume to which we depend on for our lives, and if you screw that up, people die. I see some benefits of GM, but you can’t just overlook the risks posed. The risks must be fully understood and problems must be resolved before being let out into the environment.

  13. detribe says

    No responsible person should overlook the dangers of either proceeding with or not proceeding with an important innovation: I agree.

    Bur one caveat first:

    It’s not actually always true that once you “let out a new species” you can’t take it back. At least one famous ecological study published in Nature journals about 2002 commented on by renowned ecologist Kareiva demonstrated that cultivated GM plant crops do not survive following seasons if farmers stop looking after them (surprise!) , and the same is true on many domesticated crops (surprise, surprise), and is even more certainly true if these crops are bred to be sterile. GM blue carnations, for example would die out if not looked after; they are propagated by cuttings, and with no gardener they die in the wild.

    Paradoxically the GM fearmongers want to ban technologies to genetically manage crop fertility for ill considered reasons. They want to put one safety assurance option off the table, and this is unfortunate.

    I certainly agree with your cautions, but don’t think safety issues are being ignored. (see Full Monty link above for the 150 odd studies published on it.)

    But I would also emphasise that we do in fact face an uncertain and challenging global food security future ( eg with land now being turned over to biofuel, cities, roads) decreasing cereal reserves, decreasinfg arable land, less usable water, richer and larger populations inceasing demand, climate change and so so, and that any proposal to slow down crop innovation is a real mixture of heaven and hell.

    Against that context I find the common claim that we “have plenty of food” as a claimed reason for justifying blocks to GM innovation rather ironic, given that it is usually voiced by people who are very familiar with the challenges I mention. It’s their blind spot.

    In other words, please don’t ignore the risks of saying no either (as per DDT, Golden Rice, or MMR vaccines or diptheria vaccines). Cleanlness is even partly unsafe. It famously created the severe aspects of polio epidemics in Western countries by delaying the age of first contact, and is implicated in the rising incidence of (food) allergies.

    But I am not saying to forget washing your kids, merely pointing out that one sided risk discussions, leaving out the consequences of saying no, are sometimes worse for human welfare, and the optimum welfare path is difficult to find and tread.

    Or as Amir Attaran puts it, it is the rich that can afford to balance risks on the backs of the poor.

  14. detribe says

    Ps. i sincerely commend your effort to promote balance discussion Raven. It would be interesting to see any frank and dirct discussion of the issues I raise by activists who wish to block the technology. I dont believe it has been done at all. I wouls be pleased to be proved wrong. When I put it to them face to face they say: our role is as advocates.

    The problem is this: if you advocate a case that actually causes harm and you knowingly ignore the harm, you are cupabable and in some cases criminally negligent. There lies the rub.

  16. rog says

    Patented drugs….I can tell you that the process of bringing a new drug or medical product to market is exhaustive and honerous and no company would make that investment if it was not able to recoup the costs.

  17. Raven says

    detribe,

    As to those who wish to block the technology of genetics, if it is proven viable and safe, it is inevitable. What must be considered is that if the technology is to come forth, exactly how will we safely and securely introduce this technology. IOW, we good people need to be informed of how to prepare against the risks involved in introducing a new technology into an environment in which we don’t fully understand. It’s not just about economic benefits and production, it’s about insuring health world-wide.

  18. detribe says

    Thanks Raven that’s a good general point.

    I feel exactly that way too, and the major driving force for much GM crop work is to underpin future nutritional security, underpin abundance of affordable food (which assists good health at least for the urban poor),underpin better farm productivity, and help minimise impact adverse impacts of pesticides especially on the farm (important for small-holder farmers with spray backpacks for instance in China and South Africa) in a challenging changing future. These can be achieved by promoting innovation as well, if not better than by increasing the barriers to entry of new crops without good reason.

    I think you can be very reassured the GM cotton we are talking about has been rigourously assessed for safety through OGTR and ANSFA government reg agencies.

    But before discounting economic thinking in favour of health promotion, its also worth remembering that economic benefits of better crops are closely aligned and correlated with better health as a consequence of the eradication of rural poverty in the developing world.

    IOW, poverty is a health hazard and increased farm productivity has been proven to help eradicate poverty in India and China.There are several economic studies on how the Green revolutions achieved that, for instance those on India put out by IFPRI in Washington DC.
    (see my End of Poverty series at GMO Pundit.)

    And since most farmers that grow GM crops are living in developing countries, so don’t undervalue the health impacts of better farm economics in the third world, let ald the major health benefits from nutritionally enhanced foods such as golden rice.

    In the sixties when I first worked on this topic we were all very conserved about meeting unsatisfied food needs. I have been around to witness the remarkavble outcome during my lifetime where most of the additional food the world has produced in the last 45 years has come from crop breeding innovation in concert with other technologies. That food availability – it fed at least an extra 1 billion people, is highly relevant to health of the poor.

    Lets not also forget using water efficiently which this post started with. Food productition is increasingly challenged by limited water.- and as I argue this flows on to health in several ways.

    As far as something being inevitable if it is proven viable and safe, I beg to differ. That not how public opinion works out. We have just seen water recycling rejected in Toowomba even with the need for water reccling and good proof of safety. Food irradiation is another example. It is not used mainly because it might give nuclear energy a good name.

    GM technology has much more to offer but we dont want it to get the same fate as radiation of foods or the Toowoomba water plant referendum. What a waste of human effort.

  20. Schiller Thurkettle says

    Raven,

    The necessity of proving things to the public true in only a very qualified sense. First, there’s the question of *which* public. For instance, should the European public be convinced of a technology before Africa is allowed to use it?

    There’s also the matter of what things justly require public permission. There are many things in our personal lives and business dealings which are not appropriate matters for public debate.

    There’s a growing sense in this post-modern era that the public can justify an interest in anything simply by being interested. Thus, consumers can dictate to farmers, Europeans can govern Africans, and NGOs can usurp public policy.

    These are not terribly useful developments and it would be better to say that farmers are those to whom the value of farming technology must be proved.

  21. detribe says

    I dont want to question Ravens last opinions, bur just leave a note to document an earlier comment I made that crops usually dont survive outside cultivation. I had mentioned journal Nature and 2002 from memory. The year was 2001.
    QUOTE:
    “Transgenic crops in natural habitats

    Although improved crop yields can be engineered by genetically modifying plants, there is ecological concern over whether these plants are likely to persist in the wild in the event of dispersal from their cultivated habitat. Here we present the results of a long-term study of the performance of transgenic crops in natural habitats.
    Four different crops (oilseed rape, potato, maize and sugar beet) were grown in 12 different habitats and monitored over a period of 10 years. In no case were the genetically modified plants found to be more invasive or more persistent than their conventional counterparts.

    In the late 1980s, there were three conjectural risks associated with genetically modified (GM) crops: that they would become weeds of agriculture or invasive of natural habitats; that the introduced genes would be transferred by pollen to wild relatives, whose hybrid offspring would then become more weedy or invasive; or that GM plants would be a direct hazard to humans, domestic livestock or beneficial wild organisms, for example by being toxic or allergenic. Our study assesses the grounds for the first two of these fears.

    Population sizes of all crops declined after the first year as a result of increased competition from native perennial plants. In no case did the GM lines persist for significantly
    longer than their conventional counterparts. For oilseed rape, seedling establishment was significantly lower for GM plants compared with conventional lines in six out of 12 cases, and were not significantly greater in any case.

    These experiments involved GM traits (resistance to herbicides or insects) that were not expected to increase plant fitness in natural habitats. Our results do not mean that other genetic modifications could not increase weediness or invasiveness of crop plants, but they do indicate that arable crops are unlikely to survive for long outside cultivation.”
    M. J. Crawley, S. L. Brown, R. S. Hails, D. D. Kohn, M. Rees, NATURE | VOL 409, page 682 | 8 FEBRUARY 2001

  22. Schiller Thurkettle says

    It’s rather unfortunate that crops don’t become “weedy” when they’re genetically engineered. It would be quite beneficial to wildlife, and to biodiversity in general, if maize, soybeans and potatoes “escaped” and grew wild.

    It would also be beneficial to farmers if these crops would persist in the field after being planted. It would save the time and effort of having to plant the crops repeatedly.

  23. david winderlich says

    GM Cotton More Water Efficient says the headline.

    GM cotton may use less water says the text.
    And nowhere does it say how much less. Sounds like the cotton industry is spinning another yarn – or whatever you spin with cotton.

  25. Pinxi says

    Re: Schiller’s desire for GM crops to reproduce like weeds, ie self-seed in situ, or perennial productivity.

    Good idea! Detribe/others in the know: are there any/many such GM crops? If not, why not? (obvious factors such as harvesting of seeds, crop destruction during harvest, aside)

    What is the lifespan in the field of a typical GE crop strain (if there is such a notion, like software versions)? The seed companies might release slight variations with each season’s crop batch, under the same TM mark, ie without the farmers necessarily being aware of minor changes.

  26. Chris Preston says

    Pinxi,

    Brief answers to your issues:

    1) There are no GE crops like Schiller proposes, largely as a result of agricultural management. the crops are harvested and most of the grain leaves the field. The remaining grain, if it survives predation, germinates and is either cultivated or sprayed. Crop seeds are bred to have no dormancy and seed banks decline rapidly.

    2) The lifespan of a typical GE crop strain is usually quite short. Most crop cultivars get turned over very quickly as new better cultivars become available. Cereal cultivars tend to last longer in Australia than do oilseeds.

    You do need to remember that there more than 10 Roundup Ready cotton cultivars on sale from 2 different seed companies (including stacks). In Canada there are more than 50 Roundup Ready cultivars on sale. Minor changes are made in the background breeding material. Farmers are very aware of these and follow the performance of the different cultivars through variety trials. Deltapine has all their variety trials on their website http://www.deltapine.com.au/2006.htm. No changes can be made to the GE event as that would require a new license.

  27. detribe says

    Since this thread continues, I remembered after I’d commented earlier that indeed there is an example of a GM crop “recall” that was successful in practice. It is recall of the maize vaiety Starlink licenced for non-food use which was withdrawn because it has co-mingled accidently with food strains. The concern was that it might be allergenic to humans( this was not proven as the CDC follow up given in the link shows.)
    see
    The Starlink crisis shows that, contrary to hearsay, once released, GM crops can be recalled.
    http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/starlink-crisis-shows-that-contrary-to.html

    Its interesting that many conventional foods are proven allergenic,but they stay on the market.

    “Walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, cashews, peanuts,
    soybeans, some varieties of rice and wheat, cucumbers,
    melons, mushrooms, fish, shellfish, eggs, milk,
    mother’s milk,etc., certain drugs like penicillin,
    cause true allergy in certain individuals

    Even 1/44,000 of a peanut kernel may cause severe
    anaphylaxis in some people.”

    according to a recent email to me from C Kameswara Rao.

    As far as Pinxi’s latest questions I think CP has addressed them better than I can.