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Genetically Modified Rice Makes More Food, Less Greenhouse Gas
Applehu Akbar writes: A team of researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has engineered a barley gene into rice, producing a variety that yields 50% more grain while producing 90% less of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. The new rice pulls off this trick by putting more of its energy into top growth. In countries which depend on rice as a staple, this would add up to a really large amount of increased rice and foregone methane.
... what's it taste like?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And it will probably be just as attacked as golden rice by the Anti-GMO blowhards.
That is the real question.
Wrong. Strawman at best. GMO foods are better tested for safety than most other foods -- largely because there is actually tested to begin with.
I look forward to seeing how much extra carbon is pumped into the atmosphere by anti-GMO people burning any crops planted using this.
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All the seeds that just any jerk can buy are all these heirloom seeds. Which sounds nice until you realize they're basically the most vulnerable seeds possible. The original breeds that mostly didn't make great food plants were able to take care of themselves.
The seeds you get in the packets are nice only they are modified just enough that they suck at protecting themselves... which means you have to be some sort of garden wizard or blanket the field with pesticide doom just to keep your plants alive.
I'd prefer a GMO plant that had the best of both worlds. Ideally something hearty that could deal with a very wide set of climate conditions, high pest resistance, and good production when the conditions permit.
Basically I want a plant that first looks to its own survival. And once that's handled... I want it to output as well as anything. And while we're at it... why not make the produce super nutritious.
That's a thing people don't get with GMO is that it can be made to be better for you than the original. More vitamins etc.
Take wheat for example... We could have a different breed of wheat that has one extra vitamin in it. And do that with every vitamin giving us a dozen or so types of wheat that collectively have all the vitamins and minerals a person needs.
Then when you mill the flour you can blend them together in the ideal ratio to give you a super flour that really does have everything a person needs to survive in it.
The whole anti GMO thing is obnoxious... Its the 21st century, dopes... Get over it.
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Let's face it, it's a GMO which we all know is *bad*. Sometimes you have to let folks starve in order to save them from something evil.
Do you have ESP?
Now, can we splice this with golden rice and fix the blindness epidemic due to Vitamin A deficiency please?
I'll believe it's tested when the CEO eats it for a year (as part of their regular diet).
I grew up eating beans and rice (with a bit of meat for flavor when my mother could afford it) and I bet many of the cultures this will be recommended to will consume it daily as well, so you'd do well to not tell me this is an unreasonable request.
That said I also recognize that genetic engineering isn't completely magic, I assume that the scientists who selected this barley gene know how it will change the expression of other genes in the rice plant and won't add gluten production or introduce other unwanted genes from the barley plant.
I'm always amused by the way science is suborned to political expediency.
Some people strongly tout the consensus regarding global warming/climate change. They commonly disparage and dismiss those who don't fully subscribe as politically-motivated ignoramuses who are anti-science. The doubters view themselves simply as more cautious, unwilling to risk large costs when it is not clear that science can clearly predict there will be benefits.
Other people strongly tout the consensus regarding the safety of GM foods. The opposition claims to be simply cautious, unwilling to risk any unknown dangers of these foods despite the enormous benefits they could provide.
Interestingly enough, very often it's the same people who support massive reductions in CO2 emissions based on a scientific consensus and despite the economic costs and the uncertain climate benefits, and yet would prefer to avoid the benefits of GM foods due to fear of unknown bad results, despite the scientific consensus.
Ok let's put things into perspective for a minute:
Every time a plant breeds naturally, there are some millions of DNA nucleotides that are changed as a result of that process, and it happens in ways that are entirely unpredictable and unknown.
Yet in GMO, you're making a very deliberate change to some 200 (or less) nucleotides, and you know EXACTLY what that change does, because you've already observed its results before putting it on the market.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Barley is a glutinous grain, so - is the resulting rice still gluten-free? I have no trouble with gluten (thank goodness - I absolutely love bread), but I know several people that are have problems with it.
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We're collectively producing more rice than we eat. Japan is stockpiling unused rice every year, and the world markets are flooded with cheap rice. Food insufficiency (starvation, malnutrition) is currently a problem of resource allocation, not production.
At the same time, the consumers in the big rice consuming countries aren't eating just "rice". You can typically find many dozens of very specific breeds of rice with differences in flavour, texture, firmness, size and so on. And that's within a single type (Japonica, say).
I suspect this would only be useful for rice grown for feed or as an industrial crop. But for feed, source of starch and so on there are already other, well entrenched crops available, so I don't see much of a practical impact of this development.
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However, I also believe people have a right to their own paranoid delusions
That depends heavily on exactly how harmful the delusion is. Some are harmless, others not so much. But public policy should be based on actual facts and real evidence.
therefore they have a right to know whether or not the food they buy contains GMO ingredients
Why do they have a "right to know"? Is there any actual evidence that they are harmful even a little bit? If the answer is yes then maybe you have an argument. But since the answer so far is an unequivocal no, despite large amounts of research into the question, then I cannot agree with you. I prefer my public policy decisions to be made on scientific facts and not made on ill informed paranoia.
If there is a market for people who want to know if a food is GMO-free then you will see labeling to that effect on some products and that is fine. Although if they are truly paranoid I'm not sure how they could ever be sure the label was actually true.
Seriously, I don't know how people don't get this. Wish I had mod points today!
The new rice pulls off this trick by putting more of its energy into top growth.
How long before rumors start about eating this rice creating larger breasts!
Golden rice is still waiting to be approved, and it's been over twenty years. Just forget it, and pray to jeesus instead.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Because diversity breeds strength.
Nature has a nasty way of playing catch-up. Look at the rise Asthma, Hay fever and allergies in conjunction with our increasingly sterilised environment. I'm fine with GM food, but we should be a little cautious that any reduction in diversity will have consequences sooner or later (most likely later when it's too late)
companies use all sorts of tricks to hide stuff like that. Soup companies use yeast to put MSG in Soup without reporting it (it's a by product of the yeast, which serves no other purpose). Cookie and Donut companies have for years claimed "Zero Grams Trans Fat" on products that are literally made of trans-fat by putting a token amount of wheat in there and adjusting portion sizes. You've got to make these 'warnings' really, really blunt or they just work around it.
As for labels, that's all well and good for the top 10%. What about the other 90%? You know how we found out sodium nitrate causes cancer? It wasn't the FDA. It was a farmer feeding old herring to cows and noticing they kept dying of liver cancer. The food industry doesn't exactly have the best track record....
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Of course the nut jobs will be against it.
New GM rice! Now with gluten!
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GMO? Bring them on. With reasonable safety testing. Because guess what: I like citrus fruits. However, citrus fruits are going extinct thanks to citrus greening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's spreading worldwide, affecting Asia, Israel, and Florida (29% reduced production), and other places. There is no good way to cure citrus greening (you can give a tree antibiotics, but that only works for a while and costs a lot. I'm not a fan of abusing antibiotics in this way, either!)
However, there's a GMO technique for making citrus resistant to citrus greening. No natural citrus plant is resistant. Splicing in some genes from spinach does the trick:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
So pretty soon, it's going to be GMO citrus or no citrus.
Also, it turns out naturally occurring compounds in NATURAL citrus contributes to skin cancer:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/s...
GMO citrus could have those compounds removed and be HEALTHIER (less likely to cause cancer) than natural citrus.
Bottom line, I'm for GMO citrus. It beats "no citrus". Also, it'd be nice if the GMO citrus was less risky for skin cancer too.
Most decidedly unnatural, and most decidedly better--with proper safety testing, I'm all for it.
Furthermore, a deadly fact: our industrial farming monoculture is increasingly vulnerable to this sort of worldwide wipe-out. The banana variety common in USA stores is also going extinct due to a disease. No replacement banana has been bred yet. Coffee and chocolate are going extinct, also due disease, with climate change contributing. There are credible threats to wheat. I'm very afraid that just to feed everyone we're going to need GMO to keep ahead of disease, and also to expand usable farmland via inserted genes for salt and drought tolerance.
I think before too much longer, for many people, it's going to be GMO food or no food.
--PeterM
the point is that some people are looking for it on a label, and the companies are hiding the content knowing full well folks are looking for it.
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This breed needs more fertilizers and pesticides, the article says it.
That's the problem.
Fertilizers are like drugs for the soil. Once, the soil starts using the fertilizers, it needs more and more of it every harvest. The soil turns really solid like rock. It needs far more water to grow, and heavy machinery to till it. Essentially, you are replacing the all natural process with an all clinical process. The argument is similar to saying, why don't we all check into hospitals? We will all stay healthier there.
The pesticides can't stay away from the rice. It climbs into the stem and into the rice grain.
Now, about the real water consumed : The fertilizers consume a huge amount of water to produce. So do the pesticides. So, if you added the 'hidden water' consumed in production of fertilizers, you will realize that you have just used up water at a different place, that's all.
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Height changing genes are not changing the food content.
However roundup ready gene changes not only what I'm eating but that soaked-roundup its whole life. This creates a much less safe product.
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Look I am for GMO because I think the science is sound, and it is maybe as good a progress for the 21th century as the haber process was for the 20th century for food production, but repeating the often trotted "breeding/wild mutation is the same as GMO" is stupid. Even idiot religiously fearing GMO are not that idiot to swallow that you can breed in nature fish protein into tobaccoe plant by cross breeding or wild reproduction, or plant with philia so far away from each other with barley growth factor if the growth factor are so much different. So you should not tell a totally complete lie. Such naturally mutation can only slightly change protein and not suddenly put new protein from a completely different specie or even philia suddenly in the plant. You would need million maybe 10s of million of years to get such accumulated mutation (if ever in the fish protein case), and anybody can see that such very long term adaptation has a different impact on an ecosystem than immediate gene change. I am not saying this is a bad thing, just that comparing the two is stupid. There is a difference of time scale, and adaptation in both case, and as well as what you can reach as far as changes go.
Please just don't. Refrain in future. You are just making it more difficult for us to convince the GMO fearing when you spread such obvious bad comparison.
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Please tells us how many million of years statistically you would need to go from a barley growth factor, to a rice growth factor, and would even the intermediate protein be viable (active) or even if the surrounding gene would still be active.
Yes stuff mutate. That is how we got from bacteria to human over billion of year. The key here is that function of protein evolved too, and sometime mutation are deleterious, and sometime function changes. But if both are sufficiently different, the probability to go from one to the other over statistically human relevant time (e.g. hundreds of year) is trending toward zero. In some case like when researcher inserted fish gene into tomatoe, that probability becomes even low over geological time.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your assessment that the probability we make something catastrophic is relatively low, but stating that the result could be gotten by random mutation in the wild, or even breeding is overstating it , downright to a lie in many case.
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Because the vast, vast, majority of those alterations are silent or non-sense modifications? Those 200 bases that get altered in GMO absolutely have an effect, aimed towards a specific outcome.
True, 90% of all mutations are benign, but you're missing a very important detail:
10% of these mutations make material changes. Given that there hundreds to thousands of genes in a given plant, you're invariably going to have MANY changes. So yeah, what I said still very much applies.
There's actually a whole field distinct from biology that studies exactly this. The changes in GMO food are so well understood, which is why they're sold commercially. And yes, it is as accurate as I claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, it's a GMO, which means the science-deniers on the left will hate it, and it reduces greenhouse gases, so the science-deniers on the right will hate it.
Basically, this is what we need, and it hasn't got a chance of success.
What you describe seems more likely in hybridization than in GMO. At least in GMO we know what we're doing; in hybridization, we slap two things together and see what happens.
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One reason that GMO label is beneficial is due to allergies. For example, if a person has an allergy to barley, will the modified rice trigger an allergic reaction in the person?
IIRC, barley cannot be consumed by folks with celiac, but rice can be. Will rice modified with barley genes trigger a reaction in someone with celiac?
That's GM! And GM is unatural! Unatural is evil! Burn witch burn!
The only way to fix the world's hunger problems is population reduction! But.. sex is natural! Oh my Gaia, what do we do? I know! Chemical sterilization! That's natural right?
"Chemical sterilization! That's natural right?"
No, but modern fertility awareness/natural family planning is, and it's as effective as contraception. And cheap and safe. Doesn't make any money for the drug companies, though.
Seriously, read this. Whichever side of the issue you fall on. Be informed. This isn't some corporate propaganda; it's an in depth look at actual real world GMO. It talks about the good and the bad. Bottom line: GMO are safe and we need to do more with the technology than just pesticides. Read it. http://www.slate.com/articles/...
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to.
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in GMO, you're making a very deliberate change to some 200 (or less) nucleotides, and you know exactly what that change does, because you've already observed its results before putting it on the market.
Oh, really? Please tell us then why the Golden Rice (the GM rice with a transgene for pro-vitamin A)
(a) produces large amounts of zeaxanthine
(b) the maturation period is lengthened;
(c) grain yield is reduced.
none of these traits were known until this rice was produced.
Need more examples? Take the Bt gene in GM crops. The Bt toxin is known to exude from the roots of Bt rice and Bt corn, but NOT from the roots of Bt cotton and Bt canola.
Yet another example of your EXACT predictability: the transgene for pectin synthesis does no harm in GM tobacco containing it, but in the GM apple with the same transgene, premature leaf shedding is reported.
And then there are a plethora of examples of gene silencing, gene overexpression, and variable expression of the transgene in different tissues of the same plant. Enough with the technophilic triumphalism and the hubris of "Exact knowledge", "precision" and "predictability", already.
You may be interested to read all references to high-profile scientific literature, in my article "Genetic engineering in agriculture: Uncertainties and risks" [in GMO Food: A Reference Handbook (ed. D. Newton), ABC-Clio: Santa Barbara/Denver/Oxford (2014)].
End quotes.
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