Non-GMO Plant Breeding Techniques :: Food Agriculture Science Papers

Non-GMO Plant Breeding Techniques Works Cited Missing Introduction In 1997 genetically modified foods were introduced to commercial agriculture in the form of herbicide resistant soybean seed (Farnham, Wang, and Wisner 2000). The seven years since have marked a major change in the way people worldwide look at food and its production. It has become an important issue for farmers, consumers, the government and world economies, as the safety and ethics of GMOs are debated. In response to the use of GMOs, and the overall distrust many consumers have toward them, there has been an explosion in the marketing of organic foods. All this talk about genetically modified foods and the increasing popularity of organic foods brings to the forefront an important question. How much do we know about the production of non-GMO/organic crops and can it be considered safer and more ethically sound in comparison to GMO plant production? Historical Plant Production Throughout history crop production has been an ongoing process of altering the genotype of plants to improve their yield. It has been traditional for farmers after every season to harvest seeds from the plants that appear phenotypically superior, saving them to be planted the following season. After thousands of years of doing this food crops today are a far cry from the wild lineages they were derived from (Chrispeels and Sadava pg331). While wild lineages have undergone centuries upon centuries of natural selection producing successive generations of offspring adapted to the environment, domesticated species have undergone the pressures of hand selection. This results in observable differences between domesticated plants and their wild relatives. Todayà °s crop plants have no natural seed dispersal mechanisms, nor seed dormancy periods to overcome seasonal weather conditions. Crop plants have been bred for similar growth habits so that at the time of harvest they are of uniform s hape and size (Kimball, 2000). This is the reason for example that we do not see shrubby corn or viney wheat varieties. Congruency of this type among crop species has made it easier for farmers to develop universal harvest mechanisms. Gigantism is the term given to the huge difference in the size of the fruiting bodies of crop plants versus wild relatives, which is due to the selection of the seed from parent plants that produce large fruits (Chrispeels and Sadava pg342). In the 1700à °s people began to cross plants with the intention of making crop plant varieties superior to those in existence, as opposed to the traditional and more passive method of hand picking seeds from superior plants.