فصلنامه ایمنی زیستی
سال چهارم شماره 2 (زمستان 1390)

Despite rapid industralization and urbanization since 1950s agriculture is still animportant economic sector in Turkey. However, agricultural productivity is relativelylow and needs to be increased by adopting modern agricultural practices includingtransgenic crops. The Biosafety Law which was enacted in September 2010 isinconsistent with the internationally accepted standards, including those in the EuropeanUnion, for the risk assessment, autorization and placing in the market of the geneticallymodified organisms. The Law bans the cultivation of genetically modified crops, andmakes it almost impossible to conduct research even in the field of medicalbiotechnology. This will indeed delay the adoption of agricultural biotechnology inTurkey which has been shown by early field trials to increase productivity in maize andcotton production.

Cotton is a unique crop for Indian economy. It is cultivated on 12 m ha throughoutthe country. Advances of biotechnology; especially the GM technology of Bt was firstintroduced in India in improvement of cotton. Since the yields of Indian cotton werestagnant around 300 kg lint per ha, due to the frequent epidemic of the dreaded pest‘bollworms’, there was no alternative to control the pest and enhance the productivity.An Indian seed company pioneered the commercialization of Bt cotton in India whichwas approved for farmers use in 2002 after series of biosafety and environmental safetystudies. Government of India permitted the first event, Mon 531 as Bollgard I in threecultivars of only one company. In next few years, to total diversification of Cry1Acevents such as Bollgard II, GFM-Cry1Ac, Event 1, BNLA601 and Event 9124 weresubjected to biosafety tests and released. Further more than 35 domestic seed companieswere permitted to develop and commercialize their Bt cotton cultivars to suit differentagro eco situations of the country. Currently Bt cotton occupies 90 per cent of 12 m haand has helped farmers economy. In the last decade since introduction of Bt cotton, theyields have doubled, pesticide consumption halved, export has tripled and income of thecotton farmers increased three fold. Having seen the success of Bt cotton, GM researchis geared up in both public and private sectors. Several traits such as drought andsalinity tolerance; nutritional quality, pest and disease resistance; herbicide tolerance,longer shelf life etc are being researched in crops ike tomato, potato, brinjal, pigeonpea,chick pea, cotton, sugarcane, groundnut, mustard and many others. Inspite of heavyopposition from so called "environmental activists", the progress is being made as thecountry has established one of the finest, efficient and elaborative biosafety testingsystems.

Listen to a pseudo scientist whose presentation is laced with scientific terms, figuresand charts and one without basic understanding of science is sure to fall for the story.They speak empathetically and sounds like an expert in every sense that even regulators,policymakers and politicians become their fans and followers. Many countries consultthem on regulatory matters and assign them to conduct public awareness programmes.This spells disaster on our efforts to alleviate poverty, address the needs of growingglobal population and climate change. Funded by big organic industry, they sure have astake to lose if use of pesticides is reduced in mainstream agriculture. This paperhighlights the real benefits that have been evidenced by adopting biotech crops since1996 versus the scaremongering tactics used by activists and pseudoscientists to halt itsdevelopment.

The burgeoning global population which is expected to rise by 9.2 billion in 2050and the limited global land area of 1.5 billion hectares which has increased very slightlyover the last few years, has put a lot of pressure over the issue of food sustainability.Additional burdens including soil degradation, water pollution brought by industrial andagricultural effluents, air pollution by natural and anthropogenic sources and thelooming global climate change are expected to worsen and escalate the problem ofhunger and poverty. Biotechnology is the best adapted farming technology across theglobe. Since biotech crops were commercialized in 1996, economic benefits,environmental and food safety and social benefits have been accruing to farmers andconsumers, especially the small holder farmers in developing countries. Farmeradoption has been phenomenal and it is expected that more biotech crops and traits willbe planted in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Countries should then provide theenabling capacities such as supportive policies for experimentation, trials andcommercialization of biotech crops, as well as providing science-based information tofarmers to be able to make informed choice.

Genetically modified crops were grown on 148 million hacteres globally in 2010 outof which 70 million hectares of land was used for cultivation of transgenic maize andcotton expressing insecticidal genes from Bacillus thuringiensis. Nearly all transgeniccrops around the world utilize the CaMV 35S or similar promoters to drive strong geneexpression in almost all tissue types at high levels throughout the life cycle of the plant.However, compared with the temporal or spatial specific expression of the toxin,constitutive expression of foreign proteins in transgenic plants may cause adverseeffects, such as the metabolic burden imposed on plants for constant synthesis offoreign gene products, and these may increase the potential risk of resistance of thetarget insects to Bt. There is also concern about the food safety of genetically modifiedplants. Therefore, it is desirable to use specific promoters which only express theforeign genes in specific plant tissues or organs. In this study, wound induciblepromoter (AoPR1) isolated from Asparagus officinalis cloned upstream to gus reportedgene and an insecticidal gene (cry1Ac) followed by nos terminator was used.Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA4404 harbouring the plasmid was used totransform tobacco. Based on the results in tobacco, insecticidal gene (cry1Ac) under thecontrol of wound promoter is being used to transform Turkish cotton cultivars. Byadopting strategy of wound inducible promoter (AoPR1); insecticidal protein will notaccumulate in pollen, unwounded plant organs, seed and crop residues, cotton productsand by products, thus minimizing food and environmental concerns ultimately leadingto acceptability and marketability of transgenic cotton.

Modern biotechnology has been considered as an important factor for social andeconomic developments in many countries. Genetic Engineering is a new field ofmodern biotechnology which enables scientists to produce Genetically ModifiedOrganisms (GMOs) with the objective of improvement of the productivity and thequality characters of crop plants. This new technology has raised a number of questionsand concerns related to the effect of GMOs and its products on environment and humanhealth. Therefore it has been accepted globally that production and use of GMOs shouldbe regulated at both national and international levels. Cartagena protocol on biosafety isthe first international treaty which sets out a comprehensive regulatory system forensuring the safe transfer, handling and use of Living Modified Organisms LMOs thatmay have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversitytaking into account human health. Many developing countries have initiated research onmodern biotechnology more than a decade ago but they did not have a proper regulatorysystem to oversight it. Ratification of the Cartagena protocol by these developingcountries is the start engine of creation of a national biosafety regulatory system. Mostof the developed European countries have had biosafety regulations from the beginningof modern biotechnology but after joining the Cartagena protocol, they have updatedand revised their regulations based on this international treaty. A few developedcountries with strong biotechnology industries have not joined the Cartagena protocolbut they have had national legislations to regulate modern biotechnology. In this paper,biosafety regulatory systems in two developed and two developing countries arecompared.

The successful apricot production in Europe is often limited by adaptability orfertilization problems. Significant losses are caused by virus infection. There is clearmarket demand to spread the ripening season with new transportable and attractivelycoloured cultivars. To solve these tasks breeders need more information describing theapricot gene pool. Traditional methods based on pomological and phenotypicdescriptions do not provide sufficient information to trace the expansion of apricot fromthe centres of origin; to expose the major genetic events in the evolution of cultivars orto identify and characterize genotypes during the breeding process. In this context,molecular markers have proved to be a powerful tool for solving the above problems.The least amounts of common alleles are shared between the Chinese and MiddleEuropean cultivars, indicating that these groups are distantly related. The germplasm ofthe present European cultivars is rather in Middle-Asia, Iran and Turkey. Genotypesfrom these regions could play crucial role in the European apricot breeding programs.