Genetically modified mosquitoes set to be released in Brazil to combat dengue

Justine Alford at IFL Science: ... Mosquitoes kill more people each year than all other animals combined, and on average they kill even more people than humans do. It is estimated that over 1 million people die per year from mosquito-borne diseases, such as Malaria and Dengue Fever, and millions more endure pain and suffering.

Tackling this problem has proved a formidable task in the past, but a very small UK-based company called Oxitec have been developing and implementing an exciting and cost effective technique that could help curb vector-borne diseases in problem areas without the negative environmental impacts that other approaches often bestow. This sustainable technique, which involves the release of “sterile” insects into the wild, has already proved a success story in several dengue mosquito trials in different areas of the world, and can also be applied to control other insect problems such as agricultural pests which risk food security. Furthermore, a factory in Brazil is set to be opened next week in order to raise and release these mosquitoes on a commercial scale in order to tackle Dengue Fever.

Dengue fever is the fastest-growing mosquito-borne disease in the world; incidence has increased 30-fold over the last 50 years, and currently it affects around 50-100 million people each year and causes around 25,000 deaths. It’s a viral disease spread primarily by two species of mosquito; Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopticus, although the former is responsible for the majority of transmissions. Dengue is sometimes nicknamed “breakbone fever” because of the agonizing bone pain associated with the illness, and severe cases may result in the often fatal manifestation dengue hemorrhagic fever. Currently there are no vaccines or effective antiviral drugs, meaning that mosquito control is the only viable option to control the disease....

A mosquito, photographed by ProjectManhattan , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

French scientists revive assault on pesticide, GM corn

Seed Daily via AFP: Scientists who wrote a contested study linking pesticide-treated, genetically-modified corn with tumours and liver and kidney disease in lab rats returned to the attack on Tuesday, republishing their work online.

Denying accusations of bad science, the team said their work, which was withdrawn by the journal which first printed it, had been republished in Environmental Sciences Europe, owned by Germany's Springer group.

The raw data has now been placed in the public domain for others to scrutinise, the researchers said. "Censorship of research into the risks of a technology so intertwined with global food safety undermines the value and credibility of science," the team said in a statement....

French court says ‘non’ to genetically modified corn

France 24: France on Monday definitively banned the growing of genetically modified corn in the European Union's top grain producer, where a majority of people remain strongly opposed to foods based on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

France’s left-wing majority senate approved a standing ban on MON810, a type of GM corn produced by agribusiness giant Monsanto, even though it has been cleared at European Union level, saying it poses a risk to the environment. The law had already been adopted by the lower house of parliament last month.

"This law aims to give a legal framework to our country, to ensure that a ban is applied," the French agriculture minister, Stéphane Le Foll, told the Senate at the start of the debate. France’s General Association of Corn Producers had asked the Council of State to weigh in on the parliament’s restrictions on GM corn, but the court also rejected their case on Monday.

The council said that the current ban on MON810 had not brought about an urgent economic crisis for the corn growers, as they had alleged. France adopted a decree in March halting the sowing of Monsanto's insect-resistant MON810 corn, the sole GM crop allowed for cultivation in the European Union.

The law also applies to any strain adopted at EU level in future, including the GM variety Pioneer 1507, developed jointly by DuPont and Dow Chemical. That product might be approved by the EU executive later this year, after 19 of the 28 member states failed to gather enough votes to block it....

Winslow Homer, "Corn Husking"

Building better soybeans for a hot, dry, hungry world

NASA: A new study shows that soybean plants can be redesigned to increase crop yields while requiring less water and helping to offset greenhouse gas warming. The study is the first to demonstrate that a major food crop can be modified to meet multiple goals at the same time.

The study, led by Darren Drewry of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., used an advanced vegetation model and high-performance computer optimization techniques. It found that by redesigning soybean plants in various ways, it was possible to increase soybean productivity by seven percent without using more water. Soybean plants also could be redesigned either to use 13 percent less water or to reflect 34 percent more light back to space without a loss of crop yield. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation with support from JPL and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"My intuition would have told me that some of these goals are mutually exclusive -- that there is a fundamental tradeoff between increasing productivity and conserving water," said Drewry. "We are now able to say that there actually is a combination of traits that will make progress toward all of these goals simultaneously." The study by Drewry and coauthors Praveen Kumar and Stephen Long (both of the University of Illinois) was published April 4 in the journal Global Change Biology.

The research comes at a time when global food security is threatened by population growth and climate change. The United Nations estimates that food production will need to increase 70 percent by 2050 to meet the world's food needs. Today, yields of major crops are increasing slowly or not at all. Soybeans are the world's most important protein crop...

USDA photo of soybean seeds

European scientists descend on Africa to promote GM crops

John Vidal in the Guardian's "global development" blog (UK): Africa is expected to be the next target of GM food companies, as European scientists and policymakers travel to Ethiopia to boost the prospect of growing more of the controversial crops on the continent.

Anne Glover, the chief scientific adviser to the European commission, and other prominent pro-GM researchers and policymakers from European countries including Germany, Hungary, Italy and Sweden will this week meet Ethiopian, Kenyan, Ghanaian and Nigerian farm ministers as well as officials from the African Union.

The British environment secretary, Owen Paterson, who said last year that the UK would be acting immorally if it did not make GM crop technologies available to poor countries, pull
ed out of the conference in Addis Ababa, organised by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (Easac).

According to an Easac spokeswoman, the meeting is intended to help EU and African scientists collaborate to allow the crops to be grown more easily on the continent. "EU policy on GM crops is massively important for Africa," she said. "A lot of countries are scared to do any research. They fear they will be punished by EU restrictions. They depend on the EU for their exports."

Critics, however, said the meeting was a thinly disguised attempt to promote GM farming at a governmental level, whether or not it was good for local farmers. "The meeting has the appearance of giving the European stamp of approval on GM crops, even though the majority of EU citizens oppose GM in food," said a spokeswoman for GM Watch, a UK-based NGO....

Image of DNA by JFantasy, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Closely-watched GM farm case begins in Australia

Seed Daily via AFP: An Australian farmer who lost his organic produce licence has taken his neighbour to court over contamination from his genetically modified canola crop in a closely-watched test case. Steve Marsh's case against his neighbour Michael Baxter began in Western Australia's Supreme Court on Monday, seeking damages and a permanent injunction to protect his farm from future contamination.

Marsh lost organic certification on 70 percent of his land in 2010 after swathes and seed from Baxter's farm blew onto his property, resulting in "great financial hardship and an uncertain future". His legal team said the case could set an important benchmark on farming.

"As far as we know, this is the first court case of its type anywhere in the world. It will test the legal rights of farmers to choose how and what they farm on their land," said lawyer Mark Walter.

"The case is about freedom of choice, for both farmers and for consumers. It is important that farmers retain their rights to farm GM-free food as this in turn will protect consumers' ability to purchase GM-free food."

Baxter's defence team argues that Marsh's farm, where oats and other grains are grown and sheep graze, cannot be directly affected by the GM canola because he does not grow canola himself....

Making hay in the 1930s in Australia

Smithsonian reports GMO soybean pollen threatens mexican honey sales

A press release from the Smithsonian Newsdesk: Mexico is the fourth largest honey producer and fifth largest honey exporter in the world. A Smithsonian researcher and colleagues helped rural farmers in Mexico to quantify the genetically modified organism (GMO) soybean pollen in honey samples rejected for sale in Germany. Their results will appear Feb. 7 in the online journal Scientific Reports.

David Roubik, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and colleagues developed the ability to identify pollen grains in honey in Panama and Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s when they studied the effects of the arrival of Africanized bees on native bees. “Nobody else can do this kind of work in the ‘big field’ environment and be confident that what they are seeing are soybean pollen grains,” said Roubik. They found that six honey samples from nine hives in the Campeche region contained soy pollen in addition to pollen from many wild plant species. The pollen came from crops near the bee colonies in several small apiaries.

Due to strict European regulations, rural farmers in the Mexican Yucatan face significant price cuts or outright rejection of their honey crop when their product contains pollen from GMO crops that are not for human consumption. The regional agricultural authorities, furthermore, seemed unaware that bees visited flowering soybeans to collect nectar and pollen.

 “As far as we could determine, every kind of GMO soybean grown in Campeche is approved for human consumption,” said Roubik. “But the importers sometimes still just say ‘forget it’ and do no further analysis to match GMO pollen grains with their source.”

... “We cautiously interpret these results as significant for elsewhere in Mexico where some five times the GMO soy grown in Campeche is found and beekeeping is alive and well, not to mention the rest of the world,” said Roubik. “Bee colonies act as extremely sensitive environmental indicators. Bees from a single colony may gather nectar and pollen resources from flowers in a 200-square-kilometer area. With an economy based on subsistence agriculture associated with honey production, the social implications of this shift in the status of honey are likely to be contentious and have profound implications for beekeeping in general.”....

Bees pollinated on a flower in Tula, Mexico, shot by AlejandroLinaresGarcia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

US farmers, food interests unite against GMO labeling

Seed Daily via AFP: US farmers joined with the food industry Thursday to launch a united front against labeling genetically modified products, amid mounting consumer pressure and an ongoing trade dispute with China.

More than half of US states introduced bills aimed at requiring GMO labeling last year, in a country where 80 percent of the food contains ingredients that were made with genetically modified organisms. While only two states have passed such measures, and none have yet implemented any labeling requirements, farmers are clearly concerned about the prospect.

"If each state had a different label requirement, our farmers just couldn't adapt to that and really economically grow safe, affordable food," said Ray Gaesser, president of the American Soybean Association which represents 600,000 US farmers.

Gaesser estimated that any new state-by-state labeling laws would hike prices 15 to 30 percent. Stressing the lack of scientific evidence that GMOs cause harm, Gaesser joined with corn farmers, bakers, restaurants, fisheries, animal feed and grocery store groups in forming the 30-member Coalition for Safe Affordable Food....

Corn on the cob, shot by Thamizhpparithi Maari, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

EU set to approve new GM corn after Germany drops objection

Seed Daily via AFP: A new genetically modified crop, US firm Pioneer's TC1507 corn, is set for approval in Europe next week after Germany dropped its objections, several EU sources told AFP Wednesday. "Germany is moving from being against to abstaining" in a vote on the long-running controversy, said a source close to the dossier who asked not to be identified. A second source confirmed.

Ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday are to hand down a final decision on the cultivation of TC1507 corn after a European Court ruled late last year that the company's 2001 request for permission must be dealt with. But the 28-nation bloc is badly divided over GM crops, and the EU's complex voting arithmetic has been at the heart of a deadlock on a decision.

The European Union's general affairs ministers will decide next week using qualified majority voting -- which is weighted to take account of the bigger states. If there is no majority against due to one nation's abstention, then approval will be automatic, said the EU's Health Commissioner Tonio Borg on website Vieuws.

When the principle was last voted on in 2009, the heavyweights of Britain, France and Germany ended up cancelling each other out. Asked to allow GM cultivation in the EU, but to leave space for national and even territorial opt-outs on non-health or environmental grounds, Britain was one of six backers...

A withered corn field near Erftstadt, Germany, shot by Christian Nurtsch, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license

First GMO rice to be launched in Philippines in 2016

Seed Daily via AFP: The first genetically-modified rice to be commercially available could be approved for production in the Philippines in two to three years, researchers said Tuesday, despite strong opposition from environmental groups.

Officers of both the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Philippine government's agriculture department said the newly-developed "golden rice" had completed field trials, despite vandalism at one test field. "Golden rice is coming. That is in the pipeline and a lot of the principal development and research has been completed," said Achim Dobermann, deputy director-general of IRRI.

"At the moment, there is no GM (genetically-modified) rice officially released in any country," he stressed. He said China was working on a pest-resistant variety of GM rice, but it was unknown when they would release it commercially.

Dobermann said that depending on the length of the approval process, it could take a minimum of "two to three years" before seeds are ready to be distributed to farmers.

Field trials of the rice, a genetically-modified organism (GMO), have been completed in the Philippines and it is now set to undergo tests to determine if it is safe to consume and propagate, said Antonio Alfonso, coordinator of the Agriculture Department's biotechnology programme....

Rice terraces in Banaue, Philippines, shot by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, Wikimedia Commons, Attribution: © CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC-BY-SA-3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

GM agriculture is not the answer to seed diversity – it's part of the problem

Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation in the "poverty matters" blog at the Guardian (UK): For thousands of years, farmers across the globe have skilfully observed, saved and bred a wealth of seed diversity, cultivating ever more crop varieties to deal with the challenges of farming. The need to save, exchange and pass seed on is so important to farming that it is embedded into cultural practices around the world to ensure future generations can have the seed diversity and complex farming knowledge they need to continue to grow food and develop crops.

But recent decades have seen a dramatic decrease in global seed diversity, for the first time in history. Since the introduction of the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s, alongside laws that restrict farmers' rights ... to save and exchange seed, agribusiness corporations have steadily increased sales of hybrid and GM crops. Genetic diversity and farmers' knowledge are the basis of farming; but as corporate seed and chemicals increasingly replace farmers' own ingenuity, they are now seen as mere customers. What was once agriculture is increasingly becoming agribusiness.

...Farmers today and in the future will need to grow a wide diversity of crop varieties to spread their risk and deal with variable amounts of rain, changing temperatures, saline conditions, emerging pests and diseases, as well as a diversity of nutritional and medicinal needs. Imagine each seed variety taking millions of dollars and many years before corporations bring it to market, where it would need to be planted in huge monocultures to recoup the enormous investment. The inevitable outcome of this vision will be the disappearance of global crop diversity, while farmers struggle to access the seed that they – and the communities they feed – urgently need.

It is time for us to recognise that corporate and GM agriculture is part of the problem, and cannot be part of the solution. Instead, we need policies and practices that actively support the revival of seed diversity and seed-saving knowledge in farmers' hands, and that ensure this is passed on to the generations to come....

USDA photo of some barley

New generation of genetically engineered crops found to drastically increase use of toxic pesticides

The Center for Food Safety in Eco Watch: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has quietly approved the first of a new generation of genetically engineered (GE) crops resistant to more toxic herbicides. The first crop to pass the low regulatory bar was a Bayer soybean variety genetically engineered to withstand direct application of the herbicide isoxaflutole (IFT), which according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a “probable human carcinogen.”

Center for Food Safety (CFS) projects at least a four-fold rise in national use of this toxic herbicide thanks to these new GE soybeans, and a host of related human health and environmental harms. Additional scientific detail about this and other new GE crops can be found here.

“Bayer’s new GE soybeans represent the next wave in agricultural biotechnology—crops that dramatically increase farmers’ use of and dependence on toxic herbicides,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at Center for Food Safety.

Dubbed FG72, these GE soybeans were developed by Bayer CropScience, the second-largest agrichemicals firm in the world.

The EPA has designated IFT as a “probable human carcinogen” based on animal tests in which it triggered liver and thyroid tumors in rats. IFT and its major breakdown product persist in surface waters, and despite its limited use, at present is frequently detected in tests. It is also toxic to aquatic organisms, wild plants and important crops (e.g. vegetables.). IFT is so toxic that three states—Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota—rejected the Bayer-EPA label for this herbicide as insufficiently protective of human health, the environment and neighboring crops....

The structure of isoxaflutole

Roots breakthrough for drought-resistant rice

Fox News via AFP: Japanese biotechnologists on Sunday said they had developed a rice plant with deeper roots that can sustain high yields in droughts that wipe out conventional rice crops. It is the third breakthrough in new cereal strains in less than two years, boosting the quest to feed the world's spiralling population at a time of worsening climate change.

Writing in the journal Nature Genetics, a team led by Yusaku Uga of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba describe how they found a remarkable gene in a rice plant cultivated in the dry uplands of the Philippines.

This rice strain, also called cultivar, is called Kinandang Patong. Its big characteristic is roots that are deep and grow straight downwards, delving into parched soil for water, as opposed to root systems that are shallow and grow out sideways in typical water-rich paddy fields.

The gene for this, called Deep Rooting -- dubbed DR01 -- was spliced into a cultivar called IR64, a paddy rice plant that is grown around Asia....Moderate drought reduced yield from IR64 to just 42 percent of no-drought conditions. Severe drought destroyed it totally.

But IR64 with the DR01 gene was almost unaffected by moderate drought. In severe drought, yield fell -- but not catastrophically -- by around 30 percent. "Based on our results, this variety can be adapted to upland (agriculture) without irrigation," Uga said in an email exchange with AFP....

Perennial rice seeds, shot by Desmanthus4food, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license

Monsanto gives up on new GM crops in EU

Seed Daily via AFP: Faced with widespread concerns in Europe over its genetically modified foods, US agro-chemicals giant Monsanto said Thursday it was giving up on plans to grow new GM crops in the EU, which has held up approval for years.

"We will no longer be pursuing approvals for cultivation of new biotech crops in Europe," Monsanto said, adding that it would now focus on its conventional seeds business.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it "took note of the decision" by Monsanto which produces a whole stable of GM crops and in wide use in the United States and elsewhere.

In Europe, however, suspicion about the use of GM food products is widespread, with many fearing their use is a health hazard. Monsanto insists such fears are groundless and that GM products are essential if growing global demand for food is to be met.

The EU currently allows only two GM products to be grown in the 28-member bloc -- Monsanto's MON 810 maize and German conglomerate BASF's Amflora potato....

A field of Monsanto's MON 810 maize, shot by Hanno Böck, public domain

China approves imports of GM soybean from Brazil

Seed Daily via AFP: China, the main buyer of Brazilian soybeans, has approved imports of three genetically modified varieties of the crop, to be produced on a large scale in the South American country.

The Agriculture Ministry said Monday that China gave its green light for the Intacta RR2 PRO variety, which can resist pests such as a type of caterpillar, as well as for the herbicide-resistant CV 127 and Liberty Link.

The agreement followed a meeting of Chinese and Brazilian agriculture ministers in Beijing. Many Brazilian soybean producers were awaiting China's approval before embarking on production of these genetically modified varieties, the ministry said.

Of the 7.2 million tons of soybean exported by Brazil in April, more than 5.6 million went to China. "This approval is even more important in view of the spread of the Helicoverpa armigera caterpillar in several Brazilian states," the ministry said in a statement....

Soybean seeds, shot by Scott Bauer of the US Department of Agriculture

South Korea says finds no GMO in initial tests of U.S. wheat

Reuters: South Korea has not detected genetically modified wheat in initial tests of imports of the grain and flour from Oregon, after news last week that a rogue strain of the crop had been discovered in the U.S. state spooked buyers globally.

Korean millers on Friday suspended imports of U.S. wheat until the final results of government tests on shipments from around the United States, now expected on Wednesday.

The wheat found in a northeast Oregon field in late April was developed by biotech giant Monsanto Co more than a decade ago but never put into commercial production.

The discovery of the long-forgotten strain prompted Japan to shun wheat from the Pacific Northwest at its weekly tender on Thursday, while some Asian countries ramped up inspections and the European Union said it would step up testing.

"Although our preliminary test result shows no genetically modified wheat was found, we are aiming to test all samples of wheat and flour imported from the U.S.," said an official at Korea's Ministry of Food and Drugs....

From a 2912 anti-GMO protest, shot by Daniel Goehring, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Asia concerns spread due to rogue US wheat

Seed Daily via AFP: Japan and South Korea suspended some imports of US wheat Friday as American regulators investigated the discovery in an Oregon field of rogue wheat genetically engineered to resist Monsanto herbicide.

US regulators insisted that the wheat carries no risks, but the outcome of the probe -- namely finding out whether such wheat is growing elsewhere -- could have a wider impact on world markets, with the US the biggest global exporter of wheat.

"No one wants genetically engineered wheat," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, recalling that massive opposition in 2004 led seed giant Monsanto to pull back from its bid to commercialize it.

GE wheat is not approved for commercial sale anywhere in the world, but some herbicide-resistant plants were found in April on an Oregon farm, triggering a government investigation, officials announced on Wednesday....

A wheat field, shot by Maxdrobot, public domain

US discovery of rogue GMO wheat raises concerns over controls

Carey Gillam and Julie Ingwersen in Reuters: For global consumers now on high alert over a rogue strain of genetically modified wheat found in Oregon, the question is simple: How could this happen? For a cadre of critics of biotech crops, the question is different: How could it not?

The questions arose after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that it was investigating the mysterious appearance of experimental, unapproved genetically engineered wheat plants on a farm in Oregon. The wheat was developed years ago by Monsanto Co to tolerate its Roundup herbicide, but the world's largest seed company scrapped the project and ended all field trials in 2004.

The incident joins a score of episodes in which biotech crops have eluded efforts to segregate them from conventional varieties. But it marks the first time that a test strain of wheat, which has no genetically modified varieties on the market, has escaped the protocols set up by U.S. regulators to control it.

"These requirements are leaky and there is just no doubt about that. There is a fundamental problem with the system," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who served on a biotech advisory subcommittee for the Food and Drug Administration from 2002 to 2005.

The discovery instantly roiled export markets, with Japan canceling a major shipment of wheat, a quick reminder of what is at stake - an $8 billion U.S. wheat export business....

Wheat image by Aalang, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Diplomatic cables reveal aggressive lobbying for genetically modified plants by US officials

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): American diplomats lobbied aggressively overseas to promote genetically modified (GM) food crops such as soy beans, an analysis of official cable traffic revealed on Tuesday.

The review of more than 900 diplomatic cables by the campaign group Food and Water Watch showed a carefully crafted campaign to break down resistance to GM products in Europe and other countries, and so help promote the bottom line of big American agricultural businesses.

The cables, which first surfaced with the Wikileaks disclosures two years ago, described a series of separate public relations strategies, unrolled at dozens of press junkets and biotech conferences, aimed at convincing scientists, media, industry, farmers, elected officials and others of the safety and benefits of GM products.

The report offers a further glimpse of the power of the agricultural and biotech industries in America, after the supreme court came down on the side of Monsanto in its effort to enforce its patented GM soybeans....

Monsanto to appeal Brazil GM seed ruling

Seed Daily via UPI: Biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. plans to appeal a Brazilian court ruling that threatens to put at risk billions of dollars in royalty payments from Brazilian farmers. The U.S. agricultural products company said it is seeking extension of the patent on its Roundup Ready soybean seed, used by millions of Brazilian farmers, to counter the claims.

The dispute assumed epic proportions last year when millions of Brazilian farmers sued Monsanto over what they claimed were overpayments of royalties on genetically modified soybean seeds. The court ruled in favor of the farmers, saying Monsanto owes them at least $2 billion paid since 2004.

Brazil is the largest producer of genetically modified agricultural produce after the Unites States and a major customer for Monsanto. The company is seeking to resolve the dispute and secure its proprietary rights before it starts to sell another modified seed.

Monsanto said it will "move forward with the next phase of the appeals process to secure its intellectual property rights and ensure its business isn't disrupted in the country."

Monsanto previously obtained patent protection in Brazil for its first-generation Roundup Ready soybean products. It sought to correct the term of its patent rights in Brazil to conform to a 2014 patent term granted in the United States. Monsanto seeks to have the ruling by a single superior court judge overturned by a full panel of supreme court judges....