Study shows GM Cotton can offset Environmental Impacts of Intensive Agriculture
A recent study in the United States has shown that cotton plants that have been genetically modified can offset some of the environmental impacts of intensive agriculture, including killing the crop’s main insect pest and reducing pesticide use while having no significant effects on non-targeted organisms and crops.
According to the article, the study compared conventional cotton with two genetically modified (GM) varieties. One had a bacterial gene that produces a toxin called Bacillus thuringiensis, or more commonly known as Bt. Bt is a naturally occurring insecticide that kills pink bollworm, an insect that primarily feeds upon cotton crops. The other genetically modified cotton variety had an additional inserted gene that makes it resistant to herbicides, which allows farmers to control the weeds growing in their fields without harming their cotton crops.
During the two year study, the research team, led by Dr. Yves Carriere of the University of Arizona, also compared the amounts of insecticides and herbicides that farmers used, as well as the amount of cotton produced in 81 commercial cotton fields in a region of Arizona that were planted with the different types of genetically modified cotton. The researchers found that, per pesticide application, the genetically modified cotton produced nine percent more cotton per acre than the conventional cotton crops. However, farmers that planted the GM cotton used fewer applications of a broad-spectrum insecticide. As a result, the farmers ended up with similar yields per acre regardless of the type of cotton that was grown. The types of cotton also had no effect on how much insect biodiversity was in a particular field, according to the researchers’ findings.
The researchers also pointed out that a crop’s yield, the use of pesticides by farmers, and the effects these pesticides have on non-targeted organisms and crops should be considered all together in order to assess the environmental impact of using genetically modified crops.
“The take-home message is that transgenic crops are very promising for reducing the impact of agriculture, but we need to study how they (genetically modified crops) are integrated into the way we do agriculture,” said Dr. Carriere. He also pointed out that much of the acceptance of using genetically modified crops depends on how the producers react to the technology.
The research findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences early last month.
This study is good news. More than half of the genetically modified cotton produced in the world is grown in the United States and farmers in states like Mississippi and Louisiana have already embraced GM cotton and its benefits. In other nations around the world like South Africa, China, and India, biotech cotton is also grown on a large scale. Even though researchers in India last year warned that Bt cotton grown there was not effective at killing bollworms, this study does show much promise for genetically modified crops, especially in reducing any environmental impact. I hope that more farmers and growers around the world will view this study, see what GM crops can offer, and react positively to the benefits that biotechnology can bring to their farms and to their future.
