Ancestral Genetic Resources Provide an Alternative to GMO Crops

Concern about the effects of pesticides on human health and the environment, has been a major rationale for pro-moting transgenic crops, often referred to as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or as genetically enhanced (GE) crops. Companies that sell genetically engineered crop plants claim that biotechnology offers a safe alterna-tive to agricultural chemicals and is necessary to feed the world’s expanding human population. However, there are still many unknowns about the safety of GMOs for human health and the environment, and virtually nothing is known about how the genomes of organisms may be affected by horizontal transfer of alien genes into plants, animals, and even humans. An alternative approach to transgen-ic technology is the exploitation of beneficial genes from wild relatives of crop plants using conventional breeding methods. This paper describes how genetic engineering differs from conventional plant breeding, then compares and contrasts benefits from transgenic engineering with traditional methods of crop improvement. An example of how the ancestral genes model has been employed to im-part an insect resistance trait to corn based on native re-sistance from a wild relative is compared to transgenic corn with resistance to the same insect engineered with a transgene from a bacterium. Using the ancestral genes approach, harmful chemicals used to control the worst in-sect pest of corn can be eliminated with no consequenc-es to human health or the environment; whereas with the transgenic approach, there are many safety concerns in both arenas

Agriculture · Biology · Crop · Environmental health · Gene · Genetically modified crops · Population · Transgene · CRISPR and Genetic Engineering · Genetically Modified Organisms Research · Medicine · Transgenic Plants and Applications · Biotechnology · Ecology · Genetics

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