The role of transgenic crops in sustainable development

Abstract

SummaryThe concept of sustainable development forms the basis for a wide variety of international and national policy making. World population continues to expand at about 80 M people per year, while the demand for natural resources continues to escalate. Important policies, treaties and goals underpin the notion of sustainable development. In this paper, we discuss and evaluate a range of scientific literature pertaining to the use of transgenic crops in meeting sustainable development goals. It is concluded that a considerable body of evidence has accrued since the first commercial growing of transgenic crops, which suggests that they can contribute in all three traditional pillars of sustainability, i.e. economically, environmentally and socially.Management of herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant transgenic crops to minimize the risk of weeds and pests developing resistance is discussed, together with the associated concern about the risk of loss of biodiversity. As the world population continues to rise, the evidence reviewed here suggests it would be unwise to ignore transgenic crops as one of the tools that can help meet aspirations for increasingly sustainable global development.

Transgenic Bt Cotton Does Not Disrupt the Top-Down Forces Regulating the Cotton Aphid in Central China

“…Bt crops have been and continue to be effective tools offering considerable management of several major pest guilds, and they have been regarded as one of the most cost-efficient and environmentally sound strategies [21,22]. While Bt crops are developed to manage target phytophagous pests, the unintentional effects of Bt crops on non-target phytophagous insect and arthropod natural enemies [23–27] and specifically the impacts on their behaviors [28] should not be underestimated.…”

The Realized Yield Effect of Genetically Engineered Crops: U.S. Maize and Soybean

“…Beyond their direct effects on chemical input needs, these traits have reduced labor, management, machinery, and energy use in crop production while increasing operational flexibility (Huang et al, 2005). Whereas such cost-saving considerations alone can rationalize farmers' adoption, GE varieties may have affected yields as well (Park et al, 2011). The embedded plant protection traits can be more effective in protecting potential yield than the chemicals they replaced (Gómez-Barbero et al, 2008;Ma et al, 2009).…”

Genetically modified crops in Switzerland: implications for agrosystem sustainability evidenced by multi-criteria model

“…This model is based on literature data and experts' advice and is therefore representative for the Swiss agronomic system, but the model backbone could be implemented to other countries or crops. Merging data, we structured the attributes and set scoring for each scenario accordingly, in order to inform the two main components of sustainability: socioeconomic and environmental attributes (Raymond Park et al 2011). One obvious limitation of this strategy is taking a snapshot of a system without taking into account temporal variations that may differ in various crop rotation systems (Speiser et al 2013).…”

“…Insecticide-producing (Bt toxin) and herbicide tolerance (HT) represent the vast majority of GM crops used worldwide (Benbrook 2012;Brookes and Barfoot 2013). Those GM crops have been proposed to improve global agricultural sustainability (Raymond Park et al 2011) by claiming three main advantages: (1) increase in yield, (2) lowering pesticide use and (3) increase of farmer's income (Klümper and Qaim 2014). HT crops mostly present resistance to glyphosate or glufosinate so far.…”