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-- CNN International (4/21/2011)
Chinese researchers say they have genetically modified cows to produce milk with the same nutrients as human breast milk. "Our study describes transgenic cattle whose milk offers the similar nutritional benefits as human milk," wrote Professor Li in the journal Public Library of Science (PLOS) One. "The modified bovine milk is a possible substitute for human milk," said Li, who led the research and is director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at the China Agricultural University. The milk produced by some 300 genetically modified (GM) dairy cows contains several human proteins found in breast milk, including lysozyme, lactoferrin ,and alpha-lactalbumin, the researchers report. "Human milk contains the 'just right' proportions of protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins for an infant's optimal growth and development," Li told London's Telegraph newspaper. It is his hope that the GM cow milk could be used as a replacement for baby formula. "Within 10 years, people will be able to pick up these human-milk-like products at the supermarket," Li said. According to the article, critics fear that GM food, which is widely available in the U.S. and Europe, is not safe for human consumption. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- SciDev.Net (4/21/2011)
The African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) has recommended that African countries do more to share agricultural knowledge and information, including disseminating research more widely, to help drive economic growth. The AFAAS recommendation is included in a four-year strategic plan launched by the AFAAS this month at its General Assembly in Accra, Ghana. The goal of AFAAS's strategic plan 2011-2014 is to bring national agricultural advisors - from policymakers and government agencies to non-governmental organizations and extension workers - under a single umbrella to share information. Martin Eweg, an extension service provider working with sugar cane farmers in South Africa, said the strategic plan will help African countries to set up advisory services across the continent. The plan advocates: wider dissemination of research outputs, for example through documenting and sharing innovations; increasing the uptake of improved technologies; and making a practical commitment to research over the next four years. It also includes training for providers of agricultural advisory services. The AFAAS said a lack of synergy between farmers, researchers, and policymakers has meant African farmers have been slow to adopt innovations and research findings. Speakers cited poor information exchange, a lack of sharing best practices at the continental level, and low levels of networking and partnerships, as some of the causes. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- Vietnam Plus (4/21/2011)
Vietnam's Ministry of Health is drafting a decree that would regulate genetically modified (GM) products by requiring that licences be granted by the ministry before a GM product can be sold in Vietnam, this article reports. Under the draft decree, GM products would only receive licences if they are shown to have already been commercialized, with their safety proven in at least five countries. GM products imported for use in food would require certificates of free sale as well as food hygiene and safety certificates from their country of origin. And the draft decree would require that GM food products be labelled as such. The draft decree is to be released for public comment before its enactment. According to the article, the Ministry of Health has worked with the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to establish a management board to oversee GM products and to carry out risk assessments on potential threats to health. Nguyen Quoc Binh, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Centre, says, "Vietnam has imported genetically modified food during the past few years," and no studies have shown harm to people's health. He also comments that GM labelling is not a simple issue, as the Ministry of Health will have to define appropriate thresholds for how much GM content can be in a product before it must be labelled. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has given licenses to four scientific agencies and one company to test GM corn and cotton in Vietnam, the article reports. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- Capital Press (4/20/2011)
Under a new two-year pilot project, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to ask biotech developers to conduct their own environmental assessments of genetically modified (GM) crops, or pay contractors to perform the analysis. Currently, officials at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) are responsible for the studies. The goal of the new pilot program is to make the process more timely and efficient, according to APHIS. The approach has met with support from the biotech industry, which wants to reduce delays in the approval of GM crops. Currently, the USDA has a backlog of more than 20 crops awaiting a decision on deregulation, says Karen Batra of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Batra also argues that this new approach will increase the "legal defensibility" of the USDA's decisions as more data and documentation will be generated. Critics of genetic engineering, on the other hand, worry that the program will result in biased and inaccurate environmental reviews. By allowing biotech developers to conduct their own environmental assessments, the process becomes subject to conflicts of interest, says Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center For Food Safety in the U.S. David Reinhold, the USDA's assistant director for environmental risk analysis programs, comments that officials from APHIS will still be able to ask for the studies to be revised and will continue be in charge of deciding whether to deregulate a crop. U.S. federal environmental law requires the USDA to complete environmental reviews before deregulating GM crops. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- Des Moines Register (4/20/2011)
The U.S. normally has huge surpluses of corn in reserve, but the amount of surplus corn is expected to shrink to scarcely more than a week's supply by late summer, this article reports. That means that "the world has more at stake than ever this spring" as U.S. farmers begin planting, according to the article. "This year there is no margin for error. We especially can't have bad weather," says commodity trader Don Roose of US Commodities in Des Moines, Iowa in the U.S. If corn yields suffer this year, it would affect world commodity markets and developing countries that import food, the article says. "More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said last week. The article says that the reduced size of U.S. corn surpluses is due to a smaller crop last year and to record demand for corn -- from ethanol plants and from food-importing countries.
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-- PG Economics (4/19/2011)
The latest update report from U.K. consultancy P.G. Economics says the global adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops has made farming more environmentally sustainable, profitable, and productive. According to the report, the use of GM crops reduced pesticide spraying over the 1996-2009 period by 393 million kg (-8.7 percent) and as a result decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on the area planted to GM crops by 17.1 percent. Because of reduced fuel usage and additional soil carbon storage from reduced tillage, both of which are associated with GM crops, the report says 17.7 billion kg of carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere in 2009, an amount equal to removing 7.8 million cars from the road for one year. "Net economic benefits" at the farm level are found in the report to have amounted to US$10.8 billion in 2009: a sum equivalent to adding 4.1 percent to the value of global production of the four main GM crops of soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. Of the "total farm income benefit," 57 percent (US$36.6 billion) is said to have been due to yield gains, with the balance arising from reductions in the cost of production. Two thirds of the yield gain are said to have derived from adoption of insect resistant GM crops and the balance from herbicide tolerant GM crops. The report says that the total farm income benefit in 2009 was equally divided between farmers in developed and developing countries. Farmers in developed countries, meanwhile, payed much higher royalties, in part due to lower levels of intellectual property enforcement in many developing countries. The press release can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- SciDev.Net (4/19/2011)
Mexico's authorization of a field trial of genetically modified (GM) maize has sparked debate about the effects on the country's unique maize biodiversity, this article reports. The article says that although Mexico already commercially grows some GM crops, such as cotton, GM maize is controversial because the country is home to thousands of the world's maize varieties that originated there. Monsanto has been authorized to test a variety of maize resistant to the herbicide glyphosate on less than a hectare of land in north Mexico. The article says that unlike experimental trials, such pilot projects, which can be a step towards commercialization, do not require containment measures to prevent the spread of the GM crop. Mexico's agriculture ministry said the project, approved March 8, will occur "under the strictest biosecurity measures to guarantee the prevention of involuntary dispersion of the GM maize's pollen." But Elena Álvarez-Buylla, head of the Union of Scientists Committed to Society (UCCS), said: "This opens up the door to contamination of native species in the most important centre of origin [of maize] in the entire world." The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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-- ISB News (4/19/2011)
This article describes research efforts to increase water use efficiency (WUE) in plants by reducing the density of microscopic pores (stomata) in plant leaves. Stomata serve several functions, one of which is to allow the escape of water from inside plants. Michael V. Mickelbart of Purdue University in the U.S. and his colleagues determined that the GTL1 transcription factor in Arabidopsis thaliana plants negatively regulates WUE through controlling the density of the stomata. (Arabidopsis thaliana is a model plant frequently used in research.) In future work, the researchers hope to characterize GTL1 equivalents in crop plants such as rice, sorghum, maize, soybean, and tomato to determine if regulation of these genes can lead to improved WUE in these economically important plants. The article can be viewed online at the link below.
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