Crop modification vital for man’s survival

By Arthur Makara

The New Vision

September 9, 2008

via CheckBiotech

IN a recent article, Deo Tumusiime implied that all improved varieties of crops and plants are produced through genetic modification techniques. This is not correct. The crops he refers to such as the oranges that grow big in size are produced through a method called cross-breeding (or conventional plant breeding), whereby you use pollen grains and natural fertilisation to make a hybrid (a new variety).

This involves taking the pollen with all the genes in it to create a new variety of plant which may be undesirable, hence the loss of the fruit’s natural taste.

Genetic modification technology is different from cross-breeding. Under the technology, a gene is picked from any source of plant and transferred to the ‘traditional’ plant such as an orange, say for early maturity. This way, you get an orange with all the desirable attributes in a ‘traditional’ orange except that it would be early-maturing. To increase a fruit size, a similar principle applies — you search for a plant gene[s] responsible for increasing size and you introduce it into a crop with small fruit size. The fruits increase but the rest of the attributes, including taste, remain unchanged.

Therefore, genetic modification is better for improving crops than traditional technology and should not be resisted. Virtually all crops were not created in the current form.

Crops were got by our forefathers from the wild through a process of plant breeding and selection by trial and error (both conscious and unconscious) and continuous improvement to meet man’s challenges of survival. Many of our ancestors died in the process of try-and-error as they ate poisonous plants.

Those who survived after eating non-toxic or non-poisonous plants selected the good or harmless plants for food. These plants were then domesticated from the wild and underwent various genetic changes cause by weather changes, environmental surroundings, pollination/fertilisation by other agents and breeding by scientists.

Crops will continue to undergo changes both by man and by the effects of changes in the natural environment. Genetic engineering is not the last effort in crop improvement but is a tool, among others, that scientists are using in research programmes to improve crops for better yields, pest/disease resistance, boosting nutritional value and prolonged shelf-life, amongst others.

Most of the crops in Africa today, save for a few such as sorghum, coffee and watermelons, did not originate in Africa. For instance, the orange and other related citrus fruits have their origins in north-east India; bananas originated from south-east Asia; whereas maize, pepper, beans and cotton, among others, were brought from Mexico in Latin America. The crops grew wild in those places and have many of their wild relatives (also centre of diversity) from which they evolved by systematic breeding and improvement.

Therefore, scientific work on crops is not un-Godly and has not just started. Crops continue to face a number of challenges such as diseases and changes in the environment such as poor soil conditions and drought. If scientists are not given a supportive environment to continue devising strategies to improve them, we shall surely be on the path of total crop loss.

Because of increasing population growth, land reclamation for farming and climate change, African governments must invest more in conserving the wild relatives of crops, traditional varieties, as well other plants in gene banks and botanical gardens.

At a recent meeting in Kampala, the stakeholders called upon the Government to initiate the process of setting up regional gene banks and botanical gardens where plants of different varieties and traditional crops can be conserved. They also called upon the Government to improve funding to the National Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Entebbe under the National Agricultural Research Organisation.

Such conservation centres would act as reservoirs or gene-pools from which scientists can continue to get genes for improvement of crops to continue feeding the ever-increasing population.

The writer is a biological scientist and the Director of Science Foundation

for Livelihoods and Development (SCIFODE)

By Arthur Makara

Source: The New Vision

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