Artificial fortification of Nature

June 2019

One of the first GM 'decontaminations' by activists in the UK was carried out in 1999 when two field trials of 115 GM poplar trees were trashed.

The reasons given for this action were blunt:

"those who are manipulating the DNA of trees using a very powerful but dimly understood technology, show contempt for our planet and the life it supports, including human life".

Media warnings were succinct: GM trees could lead to "a silent spring in the forests of the future".

Until the activists struck, Britain was intent on becoming a world leader in GM trees.

A healthy cure for citrus greening

June 2019

For more than ten years, a majority of orange groves in Florida have been afflicted with 'citrus greening'.  The disease has devastated millions of acres of citrus crops throughout America and elsewhere.

The visual symptoms of citrus greening include short internodes (stem length between leaves), tiny leaves, asymmetric chlorosis (loss of green colour in leaves), flowering out of season, and leaf and fruit shedding.

Trees that succumb to this disease produce fruits that are green, misshapen and bitter.  They're unsuitable for sale as fresh fruit or for juice.  Most affected trees die within a few years.

Research into citrus greening has consumed well over $540 million of funding without a single recovered orange or cured tree to show for it.

GM trees on the march

July 2017

GM trees are coming on in leaps and bounds.  The fruit of the Arctic Apple-tree is making its appearance in American Midwest stores [1], but the big GM tree event is 'short-rotation woody crops'.

Short-rotation woody crops are fast growing trees which can be harvested in just a few years for industrial purposes such as paper and biofuels.  Eucalyptus, which escaped from its native Australia when Captain Cook arrived there, has become one such major crop since the 19th Century.  Because different species are adaptable to many local climates, plantations are now found on every continent.  The next wave, just beginning to gain momentum, is GM eucalyptus.

Suicide-bomber organisms

Image Creative Commons

July 2015

In 2000, 193 governments signed up to a moratorium created at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity which specified that Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTS) would not be field tested nor commercialised.

GURTS, also known as 'terminator technologies', span any genetic trick used to prevent reproduction of GMOs.

The first GURTS were used to produce GM plants with sterile seed which farmers couldn't 'steal' to grow the next year's crop, and which provided very cost-effective in-built protection for industry patent rights. Concerns were raised, and never resolved, that the artificial fertility-damaging genes could spread into conventional crops and cripple yields.

Things went quiet for a while, but then terminator trees loomed over the horizon and, this year, the Brazilian government began to wrestle with idea of embracing crops with GURTS.

It's also emerging that some very fancy genetic systems for self-destruction are under development.

Fast fat GM eucalyptus trees

December 2014

 

Eucalyptus trees. CC Photo by Victor Camilo on Flickr

An application to plant transgenic eucalyptus trees in Brazil is underway. If successful, this will mean vast monocultures of GM trees spreading across the country. Eucalyptus is not a food, but its products and presence have huge impacts on humans.

 

Details about the artificial DNA construct in the trees are sparse, but the gene is based on one found in a tiny fast-growing weed. The novel enzyme generated by the gene seems to disrupt the cellulose (woody material) around plant cells and induce faster cell division and growth rate. As a result, the GM eucalyptus has a thicker trunk and is big enough to harvest in only five-and-a-half years, instead of the seven years needed for current commercial conventional varieties.

 

The primary purpose of all that extra eucalyptus wood is to produce paper, but other uses are being explored such as bioplastics and renewable fuels; one particular suggestion has been pellets for export to the UK to co-fire with coal in our power stations.