Summary
Attempts in the past to create genetically engineered (GE) crops have led to a great deal of negative publicity about and considerable public antipathy towards the technology; this is unfortunate. Improvements to the technology have moved well beyond the first generation of GE crops, those with resistance to herbicides. More recent advances in this field have considerable relevance to several topics covered here in Parts IV and V; further advances now in the early stages of exploration and exploitation promise to transform the world as we know it.
One major driver in the future of GE agriculture will be climate change. The number one tool that all living organisms use to respond to alterations to their environment which occur naturally over time is genetic change, which is adaptive. But the kind of genetic change dependent on simple mutations of existing endogenous genes will not bring about adaptation fast enough to meet the challenges posed by rapid climate change in the case of crop species. GE is the only technology that is both sufficiently rapid and targeted to bring about adaptation to and mitigation of the human forcing of changes to global and regional environments in crops.
For example, nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas some 300 times more harmful than CO2, is percolating into the atmosphere from soil, to which we are adding increasing amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, worldwide.
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- Reaching for the SunHow Plants Work, pp. 284 - 290Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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