Plant Biotechnology

What IS plant biotechnology and why is it useful to me??

I’m glad you

asked!

Let’s define:

Plant biotechnology: a rapidly expanding field within

biotechnology that chiefly involves the introduction of foreign genes into economically important plant species, resulting in crop improvement and the production of novel products in plants

Timeline

The genetic manipulation of plants has been going on since prehistoric times when early farmers began carefully selecting and maintaining seed from their best crop to plant for next season.

Now genes from sexually incompatible plants, animals, bacteria and insects can be introduced into plants

Recent developments

Agricultural benefitsVaccinesPytoremediation

Agricultural Benefits of Biotechnology

“Biotechnology is the most rapidly adopted technology in the history of

agriculture.”

-Bruce ChassyProfessor of Microbiology

University of Illinois

Growth of Biotechnology

In 2002… 75% of US soybean acres were planted with

biotech soybeans 71% of US cotton acreage were insect and

herbicide resistant biotech cotton varieties 34% of all corn acres were biotech corn

In 2001, biotech crop planting was up 20%, with greatest percentage growth in developing countries

Why biotech?

Improves yieldsCuts costsReduces spraying Improves farmers’ quality of life

Stats

US biotech crops planted in US produced additional 4 billion pounds of food and fiber on same acreage

Improved farm income by $1.5 billion

Reduced pesticide use by 46 million lbs.

Biotech in Third World

UN estimates nearly 800 million people around the world are undernourished

About 400 million women of child-bearing age are iron deficient, exposing their babies to various birth defects

Over 100 million children suffer from Vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of blindness

Tens of millions of people around the world suffer from other major ailments or nutritional deficiencies caused by lack of food

How does biotech help?

Improves farming productivity in places where there are food shortages

Genetically modified food such as ‘golden rice’ and ‘protato’ that have increased levels of nutrients

Biotech and the environment

Thanks to biotechnology, corn is the first renewable raw material that can replace petrochemicals in fibers and plastics

Corn resin could be used to make fibers, plastic containers, and other products

Since corn resin is biodegradable, can dramatically reduce pollution and world’s reliance on crude oil to make polyesters, plastics, and other products

Also, an increase in environmentally friendly conservation tillage practices is made possible through the adoption of biotech crops

As a result…

Nearly 1 billion tons of soil saved per year Lowered maintenance costs for activities

such as dredging rivers and treating drinking water, saving $3.5 billion in sedimentation costs in 2002

Reduced levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide

306 million gallons of fuel saved in 2002 by reducing number of tractor passes needed to control weeds

No more shots!

CHARLES ARNTZEN

Former Dean of the School of Agriculture @ Texas A&M University

Presently professor of plant biology @ Arizona StateAnd founder and director of the Arizona Biodesign Institute in Tempe

The problem @ hand

Unicef estimates that 30 million infants go without basic immunizations every year

3 million of those die from preventable disease

Arntzen:

has been successful in producing GM bananas that produce a protein found on the outer surface of the Hepatitis B virus

concluded 3 early-stage clinical trials using potatoes bearing vaccines against hepatitis B, E. coli and the Norwalk virus

goal is dry powder or baby food puree form of vaccine

Other innovations in the works

Potatoes carrying insulin: Loma Linda University in California

Corn that staves off intestinal pathogens: Iowa State

Corn geared toward cystic fybrosis: Meristem Therapeutics in France

Early stage clinical trials with herpes monoclonal antibody growth in corn: Epicyte Pharmaceuticals in San Diego

                                             

            

Benefits

Small crops, big results: Arntzen estimates he could vaccinate all of China against Hepatitis B using 125 acres

No need for sterile injections or refrigerated vaccines

No need to worry about acquiring the disease from the vaccine: genetically engineered vaccines cannot cause the disease because the engineered bacteria cell or plant is just creating a protein that exists on the surface of a virus- not the whole virus

 

Worries?

“I don’t see that every village in Africa or Latin America is going to have a pharmaceutical banana tree.”

-Charles Arntzen

Treated like any other pharmaceutical or herbal medicine

Strict regulations preventing cross-pollination

phytoremedi-

what?!

Let’s define

Phytoremediation – the use of plants to remove pollutants from the environment and render them harmless

Phytoextraction – the actual

removing of the pollutants

Phytoremediation

Work on this began in the 1980s Scientists noticed that some plants could

take in toxic metals that would kill other plants

Scientist theorized that these plants could be used to clean contaminated land cheaply and more naturally

A tree

The Basics

Giant webs of roots act as a solar powered pump to withdraw, concentrate and transport essential elements and compounds from the soil and water

This also absorbs the contaminates The pollutants are drawn up into the harvestable

part of the plant The plant is then harvested and disposed of The land or aquifer will eventually become

decontaminated

How phytoextraction works

What can be taken in by the roots?

Heavy metal concentrations of lead, uranium, and cadmium

ArsenicPetroleum products It can even be used to clean the

urban city air

Roots can clean the air you say?

House plants foliage is capable of removing low levels of pollution

Plant roots, assisted by a carbon filter, are able to remove much higher concentration of pollution

They can remove:

asbestos pesticides carbon dioxide carbon monoxide other gases chemicals from

detergents, solvents, and cleaning fluids

fibers released from clothing, furnishings, draperies, glass, carpets, and insulation

fungi and bacteria tobacco smoke

More benefits

Plants in urban areas absorb the extra carbon and use it for photosynthesis

Leaves also collect dust until it is washed off by rain, by adding more foliage dust can be reduced by 75%

During photosynthesis, tree foliage also removes from the atmosphere other chemicals, such as nitrogen oxides, airborne ammonia, some sulfur dioxide, and ozone, that are part of the smog and greenhouse effect problems

Working Phytoremediation

At UGA Om Dhankher has successfully engineered tobacco and other hearty plants to not only absorb arsenic but also to combine it with other proteins that would render it non-toxic

He hopes that future generations of these plants will be able to absorb 50 times the heavy metals they do today

Indian Mustard (Brassica Juncea L.) has already successfully removed lead from contaminated soil

It has even removed uranium

Problems with acceptance

EPA has not fully accepted this as a way of cleaning up after ourselves

Phytoremediation has yet to gain a proven track record with clean ups, but is still being perfected

Cost

There is also an economic side to acceptance Landowners contract clean-up through large

companies These companies receive a percentage of the

cost of clean up which would be in the 10’s of millions of dollars

Why would they want to endorse a much cheaper way of doing things?

Time

Phytoremediation also takes much longer

It can take up to 100 years to clean a site

For this reason it is better to use on a small lot of land that is not heavily contaminated until the technology can be perfected

Biotech scare stories

Maybe you’ve heard in the news about biotech corn that:

threatened monarch butterflies snuck its way into the food supply and tainted tacos overtook native maize crops in Mexico Not true.You never hear the rest of the story.You don’t hear about the scientist’s findings that

conclude these rumors to be shady

“An extensive review of 250 scientific publications which address issues of the impacts of GM crops has concluded that many of the concerns which are featured

prominently in media coverage do not stand up to careful scrutiny.”

-Life Sciences Network(the review appeared in the January edition of

The Plant Journal)

Europe vs. Genetically Modified Foods

Frankenfoods 1998 ban of GMs Lack of confidence in their regulatory

system after the Mad Cow Disease fiasco Euro-Toques: main objective is to protect the fine

quality and flavor of food

Labeling

Why 3rd World countries need Europe to cooperate

“Europe seems to be inward looking when producing biotech legislation. But any

rules set in Brussels will affect the small scale farmer in Africa or India.”

Simon BarberDirector of the Plant Biotech Unit at EuropaBio

“We are here to tell our part of the story. In Europebiotechnology seems to be more about ideologythan about rational choice. For us biotech is an

important tool to fight hunger and malnutrition. Wedo not want to be a pawn in the transatlantic trade

squabble. We have our own voice and want tomake our own decisions on how to use this new

technology.”

Professor James OchandaCoordinator Biotechnology Laboratory

University of Nairobi, Kenya Brussels, January 29, 2003

The governments of several countries in

Southern Africa have declared national disasters due to the food

security crisis

What about the millions of malnourished people whose

lives could be saved by

transgenicfoods?