What is a "New Era" Application?

The vast majority of acres now planted worldwide to GMO crops have been engineered via rDNA techniques to be resistant to herbicides or to produce Bt toxins in cell tissues, for control of certain Lepidopteran insects. These applications have proven costly and sometimes erratic in the field, in part because of gene silencing and pleitropic effects. Questions remain over environmental impacts and food safety.

"New era" applications strive to capture the benefits rDNA techniques without the costs, risks, and potential instability. They utilize emerging knowledge of gene location and function to guide breeders in the application of conventional and innovative breeding techniques that do not rely on a transgene with a promoter and marker genes. The relative roles, capabilities, and tools of transgene-based versus "New era" applications will be the focus of much discussion in the years ahead, since most ag biotech skeptics are either generally to fully supportive of "New era" applications like marker-assisted breeding.

Ag BioTech InfoNet will map the evolution of this discussion in future postings under the heading "New Era" Applications

    Science

• From Corn-Bred Statistics to High-Tech Breeding, Agricultural Reseach, February, 2001

• Southern Illinois U. Researcher Deconstructs Soybean Genome, AgBioView (via Agnet), September 24, 2001

• South Africa – CGIAR Partnership, Results in New Maize Varieties With 30 to 50 Percent Higher Yields, Press Release, May 21, 2001

• Tagging New Leaf Rust Resistance Genes in Wheat, ARS Magazine, May 2001 10K

• Researchers Find Gene Responsible For Plant's Self-Defense Mechanism "Jasmonic acid carboxyl methyltransferase: A key enzyme for jasmonate-regulated plant responses"- ABSTRACT, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 8, 4788-4793, April 10, 2001

• Can Genetically Modified Crops Go 'Greener'?, Science, Volume 290, October 13, 2000

• Plant Breeding in the 21st Century, by Donald Duvick in Choices, Fourth Quarter, 1992 (pdf 1,345K)

• The New Biology: A Union of Ecology and Molecular Biology, by Donald N. Duvick in Choices, Fourth Quarter, 1990 (pdf 1,453K)

• 1977 presentation by Dr. Don Duvick, "Recombinant DNA Molecule Research Potential for Agricultural Crop Plants," delivered before the NRC "Committee for the Consideration of Proposed Guidelines for Recombinant DNA Research."

• The Genetics and Exploitation of Heterosis in Crops is published by the American Society of Agronomy, and the Crop Science Society of America. It is a book based on an international symposium organized and hosted by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, CIMMYT) in Mexico City, 17-22 August 1997
  • The Genetics and Exploitation of Heterosis in Crops, Table of Contents
  • Heterosis: Feeding People and Protecting Natural Resources
           D.N. Duvick
  • Commercial Strategies for Exploitation of Heterosis
           D.N. Duvick

• Genomics portends the next revolution in agriculture, AAAS presentation by Dr. Robert Goodman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, February 18, 2001

• Campaigning for organic food and farming and sustainable forestry -- Marker Assisted Plant Breeding, Policy Paper, The Soil Association, UK

• Emerging Technologies in Plant Biotechnology, Information Systems for Biotechnology (ISB) News Report, February 2001

• Apomixis: A Useful Contribution to Plant Breeding?, Oliver Rautenberg, November 1999