Found this interesting… Scientists Made a Healthy Crop Healthier
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Great example of a tireless breeding effort. Thanks for sharing the article.
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Trait Stacking can be done by gene editing or the old slow way that involves traditional plant breeding methods, it’s slow, so i don’t think they used the traditional way, so this is a GMO in my opinion. i scanned the paper and looked up the meaning of the language so i could understand what they did. I don’t trust government funded scientist because they ultimately do not have the best interest of unwashed masses. Besides the nutrients this plant produces, what else is in this cultivar that harms you over years of consumption? never trust a government scientist or a Big Agricultural corporation.
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The plants discussed here are indeed transgenic. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Skepticism is good, general distrust of all new technology is silly. Genetic modification can be used to make crops grow better, require less pesticides, and be more nutritious. There isn’t some big conspiracy of government scientists out to get you. Especially not at the ARS. I know some ARS scientists. They are just regular scientists who are a bit underpaid and working on something they think is worthwhile. They genuinely want to make the world a better place, even if most of their individual contributions are incremental. That’s how science and progress works. And we’re all the beneficiaries of the science done decades and centuries ago, making our current lives possible.
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“Beneficiaries” and caught in the crossfire…
I think it is far safer to assume the worst first whenever it comes to governments and big corporations.
Am I mistaken when i say that the vast majority of ag land in america grows under 4 crops which have been bred to have a high tolerance to pesticide use like glyphosate, resulting in major losses of natural habitat, cultural and crop diversity, small farmer financial security etc. This is in a huge part because of gov policies and what some would consider “great scientific advancements”… It is eerie to think good intentions constitute good results.
The road to fill in the blank may be paved with good intentioned efforts…
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“32 times more provitamin A carotenoids than typical sorghum varieties while also providing minerals like zinc and iron.”
that is a concerning increase in vit a…
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So are you a dietitian? Do you know how much is the base level? 32x could still be too low if the base is way short of the necessary amount. And the target population is highly deficient. I don’t understand how you can say anything about this.
You guys act like these people are stupid enough and evil enough to try to poison starving people in Africa. It gets a bit tiresome.
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I think people make a lot of mistakes.
As you are trying to say, I do not know all the intricacies about the topic, that is also my point but in reference to scientists and governments. You can easily find many point that show how often what seems like a good idea in a petri dish, gets applied to the real world and it turns into a mess.
I would be much happier to read about crop diversity be spread in Africa to reduce nutritional deficiencies, sweet potatoes, papayas, plantains etc things that are already around seem like safer solutions. Do you think the scientists foresee any issue with the aspect that the cross pollination of the crop could result in unknown issues like reducing the quality or diversity of their current sorghum?
There are people that have vit a toxicity issues, vit a is a relatively new and imo not so well understood vitamin.
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Assuming the scientists are aware of vitamin A toxicity issues that some people may have, they probably looked at the statistics and decided that wasn’t a prominent enough issue within the target population. Not that those people are to be ignored, but that this crop isn’t targeted at them.
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Interesting article I came across just now. Hopefully credible scientists.
MEXICO CITY (CN) — Genetically modified corn is not safe for human consumption and threatens biodiversity in Mexico, several scientists said Wednesday.
They made their statements as Mexico fights a bitter trade dispute with the U.S. and Canada over the importation of genetically modified (GM) corn.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken steps to gradually phase out GM corn in Mexico, vowing to completely end human consumption of the product by 2024. Business groups have urged against the ban, claiming it will hurt Mexico’s economy.
Both of Mexico’s North American trade partners have claimed that the restrictions are not based on science.
Speaking during a series of webinars held by an activist group that has opposed GM corn in Mexico over the last decade, the academics claimed that the science proving its harm to the human body has been suppressed.
“Just as the tobacco industry fabricated scientific evidence that smoking tobacco was not a health risk, science financed by private capital has fabricated evidence that the sowing and consumption of GM corn does not present a human or ecological health risk,” said Antonio Turrent Fernández, a researcher with Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research.
This was made possible, he said, by the chronic, subclinical nature of the harm of tobacco use, and claimed that the same is happening with GM corn.
“You can smoke one cigarette and do an analysis and you won’t find harmful effects,” he said. “But we now know that if you smoke for 60 years, you’ll see very severe harm. It takes many years for it to appear.”
He pointed to a controversial study that found that lab rats fed GM corn over the course of their entire lives were up to five times more likely to develop tumors and fatal liver and kidney problems.
First published in the scientific journal “Food and Chemical Toxicology” in 2012, the study was retracted in 2014 after the validity of its findings was called into question. Critics cast doubt on the size of the study groups and accused the authors of improper animal use and even fraud.
After analyzing the researchers’ raw data, the journal found no evidence of fraud, but did determine that the results were inconclusive.
However, as Turrent noted during Wednesday’s webinar, the study was later republished in a different scientific journal.
While most of the corn Mexico produces comes from industrial farms in northern states like Sonora, corn in the south of Mexico is more commonly grown on small plots such as this family-run farm in the mountains of the southern state of Puebla. (Cody Copeland/Courthouse News)
Genetic modification also presents an existential threat to native species of corn and other basic food staples in Mexico, according to Alma Piñeyro Nelson, a biologist at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University.
Placing that threat within a broader “crisis” of conservation of native Mexican varieties, she explained how genetic modification also endangers native species of beans, avocados, tomatoes and other wild species “of which Mexico is an important reservoir.”
Native varieties of potatoes, tomatillos, chiles, squashes, vanilla and cotton are also experiencing varying levels of endangerment, she said.
What Piñeyro called “de-ruralization” experienced by traditional forms of cultivation is exacerbating this process.
“The children and grandchildren of small-scale farmers go to work in the cities, decide to take better-paid jobs that aren’t stigmatized as work for the poor or migrate to other countries, primarily the United States,” she said.
This loss of biodiversity constitutes just one of several challenges to the conservation of native species and the culture they have come to inspire and evolve with for thousands of years, according to Carlos Ávila Bello, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana, in the state of Veracruz.
Climate change, extractive capitalism, the patenting of genetic resources and traditional knowledge and laws and international treaties, such as the USMCA, under which the U.S. initiated a trade dispute process in June, are other challenging factors, Ávila said.
Laws recognizing the collective rights of Indigenous communities, valuing local gastronomies and knowledge, seed banks and other recommendations are “fundamental” to preserving Mexico’s rich biodiversity of native species, he said.
To round out the session, social anthropologist Julio Glockner presented the various biocultural links between native corn species and the humans who have cultivated them here for thousands of years.
Anthropological evidence shows that corn, squash and bean cultivation dates as far back as 10,000 years in Mexico. Over the millennia, Mesoamerican peoples associated these crops with a “sacred world view that survives to this day” both in religious and sociocultural structures.
A colloquial expression of corn “jiloteando,” referring to when young, tender ears begin to sprout silk, for example, comes from Xilonen, one of several Aztec gods based on the various stages of the plant’s growth.
“We are a country that has enjoyed the benefits of maize for centuries,” he said. “And it would be unforgivable if, whether through ignorance or apathy, we were to degrade our food by allowing the cultivation that vegetal Frankenstein that the transnational vandals insist on offering us.”
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Without advances in science most of us over the age of 60 would be deceased, which would be necessary if the advances in agriculture had not been made. Current agricultural practices make it possible for the world’s current population to exist (the subject of world’s population can be debated another time). There are always positives and negatives with each scientific “advancement”. Each of us can choose to use those scientific advancements that we see fit.
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Clearly stated in the underlying paper is that this is “transgenic” sorghum. You don’t have to beat around the bush. It is the same concept as Golden Rice. Is this a harmful modification? IMO, no, because we eat these chemicals every day. Carrots, tomatoes, even cucumbers all contain an abundance of phytoene and other vitamin A precursors. I have a conventionally bred tomato that has so much provitamin A eating just one small fruit daily meets dietary needs. 97L97 was conventionally bred by John Stommel using wild tomato relatives transferring 2 genes into a domestic tomato background.
Agriculture is concentrated on Grass, Maize, Wheat, Potatoes, Soybeans, and Rice. About 80% of calories grown world wide depend on these crops. Without them, you would likely be starving. Farm efficiency increases with size. Small farms inherently can’t keep up with larger operations. GMO crops have zero-zilch to do with small farmers going out of business. It was happening from the first time a tractor plowed a field and it will continue until something changes the paradigm.
Fud about GMO’s does not fly very well around here. Either bring legitimate concerns to the table or be prepared to be countered with facts. Losing diversity in Maize is a legitimate concern because wind pollinated spread of GMO pollen is a fact of life. I personally have a serious problem with herbicide tolerant and pest tolerant GMO’s because it results in significant harm to other sectors of agriculture. I don’t have a problem with Golden Rice because I know the genes involved already exist in just about every solanum in existence. (tomato, potato, eggplant, tomatillo, etc) Lab rats developing tumors has been so thoroughly debunked that I’m surprised to see it even mentioned. If it is published a thousand times, it will still be wrong. It is not hard to find out why the “study” is bogus, do some due diligence. Mexico has a problem with GMO maize because it outproduces heritage lines so much there is no comparison. It was not random contamination of heritage lines. Mexican farmers found out how much more productive GMO maize is and promptly decided to grow it abandoning heritage maize in droves.
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The base level in sorghum is very low.
Quoting from here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2475299123209956
“The subsequent release of minerals did not affect micellarization efficiency and the bioaccessible fraction of provitamin A carotenoids were over 2300% greater in transgenic events compared to corresponding null segregants and wild-type controls; providing 53.7% of a 4–8-year-old child’s vitamin A estimated average requirement in a standard 200 g serving of porridge.”
I am not implying that this GM sorghum or any GM food is safe, and I am not implying that it is unsafe. I am not saying that GM foods are ethical, or unethical. People from both sides of this argument have made up their minds and there is little point arguing one way or another online.
All I am saying is that sorghum is typically so low in provitamin A caretenoids so that increasing it 32 times does not pose a safety concern.
Sorry but I gotta call out bullshit like this when I see it. This is false, and I’m not saying that because I don’t believe the US government could do something evil. It has in the past, just read about what the CIA did on a population level in Latin America. But this is simply not true because it fundamentally can’t be. That’s not how vaccines work. There’s no shortage of real things to criticize the government for, and plenty of real concerns about big commercial agriculture. So no need to make things up.
I never tried to claim that you can’t engineer plants to produce specific RNAs or proteins. That part isn’t even that hard, it just takes effort and money. But nobody is going to sneak this into your grocery stores because vaccines need to be given at a specific dosage. The technology being developed here is akin to currently used chicken eggs to produce flu vaccines, or that used to produce protein drugs in big vats of hamster cell lines. They are just trying to use the chloroplasts in plants as factories, because growing plants is cheap compared to growing something under carefully controlled and sterile lab fermentation conditions.
As an aside, vaccines are a good thing. But that’s not really a relevant topic for a growing fruit forum so I won’t go there.
the technology is targeted at us all, while all products of GMO will be regional specific, ours could be GMO honey bees or GMO vegetables and grain products that historically have been produced in the western world over the centuries, i cant help but think there is a power grab to own the genetics of the food we eat and the bad guys see non-gno food as something whey cannot own, that must be eradicated, to the bad guys competition is a sin. i would not want GMO fruit trees growing in my yard, and the bad guys are working overtime to get them out into the world, there is money to be made and plant genetics to be patented and patent rights to be sold. I see GMO as a potential Fermi Paradox event, a great filter. because we are human, we make mistakes and we just need one scientist to break bad and willfully release something dangerous. It’s not realistic to believe all scientist have ethical standards like we expect from our Clergy and we know that’s not always the case. I will grow non GMO fruit trees until my last scheduled day on earth.
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This thread has turned into politics so it is closed.
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