Disease Resistant GM Crops, Where Do We Stand?

Genetic engineering has been viewed as an important technology to help develop disease resistant crops, but to date only few disease-resistant GM crops have been introduced in the market. This is in stark contrast with the rate of adoption of insect pest-resistant and herbicide-tolerant crops, which represents more than 90 percent of the commercially available GM varieties. Why is this?

According to a paper published by the European Journal of Plant Pathology the answer lies primarily on the complexity of the biology of disease resistance. The differing biology of the various types of plant pathogens presents substantial problems in developing GM resistant plants. Plant pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, oomycetes and viruses, are physiologically very different, and thus no single gene product can be expected to have a direct toxic effect on these organisms.

The authors noted that three factors must be present for the successful adoption of disease resistant GM crops: the technical solution to a problem which has no other obvious alternative, the economic incentive for implementing the solution, and market and public acceptance. The combination of these factors is present in the virus-resistant papaya developed in Hawaii.

Subcribers may read the article at http://springerlink.metapress.com/content/311565m5v4853128/fulltext.pdf, or contact dbc@life.ku.dk for further information.