Transgenic market prospects against food crises
report Reporter Mehr Population growth, climate change, and increasing human impact on land and water systems all pose significant challenges to current agricultural practices.
Hossein Shirzad, a researcher in the field of development agriculture, wrote in an exclusive note for Mehr, genetic engineering is a tool to accelerate the breeding of new varieties that can help farmers and agricultural systems to Adapt to rapidly changing physical, technological, and global market conditions. Transgenic crops can alleviate several current challenges in commercial agriculture. Current market trends position them as one of the fastest growing and most innovative global industries, benefiting not only manufacturers but also consumers and national economies.
The market of transgenic seeds has changed drastically since 1996, from a competitive sector Owned by family-owned companies, it has transformed into one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, dominated by a small number of multinational holding companies. Analysts forecast a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of between 9.83% and 10% between 2017 and 2025 for the industry to reach US$113.28 billion, nearly quadrupling from US$26.7 billion in 2007. It is more.
Among researchers, this staggering growth has been attributed to increased adoption of biofuels over conventional fuels in Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Africa, leading to an increase in Energy crops (wheat, sugarcane, corn and soy) are planted to produce biodiesel. Despite increasing growth in APAC and Africa, North America currently dominates the transgenic seed industry with a market share of around 30%. The International Service Institute for Achieving Agricultural-Biotechnology Applications (ISAAA) has published its annual report and the statistics and figures are telling. The global seed market has been captured by a cartel of agricultural chemical companies.
Currently, only 4 companies control the $47 billion seed market. They also have 75% of the global agrochemical market. This is not an accident. These companies focus on selling commercial seeds that are propagated using heavy agrochemicals, and their genetically modified seeds currently account for almost half (46%) of all global seed sales. The logical result of this centralized and legally backed corporate power is an exponential increase in corporate profits. With their monopoly power and the criminalization of alternatives, the agrochemical giants are free to raise prices and squeeze farmers. During the last 5 years, their income and profits from the sale of seeds and agricultural chemicals have increased, and the profits of both have almost doubled during this period.
After pandomi corona and food supply chain disruptions, the world is seeing increased pressure in favor of genetically modified (GMO) seeds and crops, and biotech and agribusiness companies are on the way Setting up new biotechnology plants as They are a solution to get rid of the sufferings of humanity, from food and nutritional insecurity, climate change and loss of biodiversity. At a time when a solution is desperately needed, companies hope that new GMOs (genetically modified organisms) can gain public support and that they, too, can easily evade biosafety regulations. This leads to the constant change of laws, regulations and standards governing GMOs across Asian countries.
Proliferation of genetically edited products
Gene-edited products, a new generation of GMO technology, are particularly on the rise and receiving commercial licenses. This causes serious concern for consumers, agricultural communities and activists. As of 2019, genetically modified crops were cultivated on about 190 million hectares worldwide, including four main crops: soybeans 50%, corn 30%, cotton 13%, and canola. It5%. Most of these plants are not for human consumption, but rather as animal feed, and in the last two decades, corn has been increasingly used for ethanol production. Despite the decrease in the number of GMO approvals in the world, the commercialization of transgenic products has continued steadily, even in some countries the commercialization process has accelerated.
Of course, in recent years, companies have been working on developing transgenics with new traits, mainly against pests, bruise-resistant varieties and acrylic amide is minimal, herbicides and cryogenic resistances. In parallel with these activities, biotech companies have been successful in rapidly moving their new GMOs, known as new plant breeding techniques. Because some of these new breeding techniques, such as gene editing, do not require the injection and insertion of foreign genes, the biotech industry and some government agencies argue that these gene-edited crops should not be treated the same as GMO crops. As a result, in several Asian countries, gene-edited products are being approved and commercialized for public consumption, and new policies are being developed to make gene-edited products available.
As in the European Union, Asia-Pacific countries are debating whether to consider genetically modified organisms as GMOs. ? For example, New Zealand made it clear that genetically modified crops should be regulated in the same restrictive way as GMOs. However, India introduced new regulations in March 2022, exempting gene editing products from GMO regulations; But what is gene editing?
Gene editing or genome editing covers a wide range of genetic engineering techniques used to edit parts of the genome of almost any living organism. This new biotechnology is gaining popularity and support for considering a faster, cheaper and relatively easy method of genetic modification. Most gene editing involves creating a new product by cutting or removing very small sections of DNA and does not necessarily involve transgenic or introducing foreign genes from other species. For this reason, according to experts, gene editing is claimed as non-transgenic.
This claim means that there is no need to comply with biological safety regulations regarding these products. However, considerable research demonstrates that genome editing technologies and applications clearly fall within the definition of a modified organism, whether it involves insertion, deletion, or editing of the genome sequence. Among several techniques used in gene editing, the most popular is known as CRISPR. CRISPR typically uses a type of DNA cutter called “Cas9,” which explains why it is often referred to as the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system.
There is currently a lot of critical discussion going on about why genome-edited organisms are not exempted from the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety?
