CARMI, Ill. -- A handful of farmers in Carmi and
elsewhere in Southern Illinois are trying their hands at
raising a new cash crop - genetically engineered tobacco
that its maker says could help people stop smoking.
Almost no one here can remember when southeastern Illinois
was a major producer of tobacco, but a North
Carolina-based cigarette maker is hoping farmers here will
replace some of their corn and soybean fields with the new
no-nicotine tobacco.
The tobacco was genetically engineered by scientists at
Vector Tobacco - a sister company to Liggett Group Ltd.,
the renegade tobacco company that broke ranks with the
industry by being the first to admit that nicotine was
addictive.
Vector scientists say their new Omni Free cigarettes made
with the new tobacco taste like regular cigarettes but
contain fewer carcinogens and may help smokers kick the
habit.
But the product has its critics. Some say the tobacco
isn't any safer than traditional cigarettes. And other big
tobacco companies are worried that the genetically
engineered plants could interfere with their foreign
cigarette sales.
Farmers here working with Vector officials say they don't
care whether the crop is genetically engineered or not.
They just want to know if tobacco is a good alternative to
more conventional crops such as corn and soybeans.
"It's a learning year for all of us. We're still
trying to learn the soil, learn the climate, learn the
people," said Bill Maksymowicz , an agronomist for
Vector.
Carl Short is one of the farmers who welcomes the tobacco.
The 64-year-old farmer said he had tried just about
everything to turn a profit. He raises and races
Thoroughbred horses and plants about 500 acres of corn,
soybeans and other crops.
But if it weren't for government price supports, Short
says he wouldn't make a dime on the grain.
A tobacco grower can bring home $1,000 for every acre of
tobacco he harvests, Short said. That lucrative
proposition got Short interested in trying tobacco, until
he found the catch - too much work.
The prospect of hiring workers and overseeing production
of a labor-intensive crop he wasn't familiar with stopped
Short from trying his own hand at growing tobacco. So he
is leasing 100 acres of land to Vector.
Vector expects to hire a crew of 150 migrant workers to
harvest the crop.
The company leases about 300 additional acres elsewhere in
southeastern Illinois from others. And private farmers are
growing 200 more acres of the tobacco in several Illinois
counties.
Amish farmers in Pennsylvania and growers in Louisiana and
Mississippi also are raising Vector's tobacco. Five
farmers in Iowa have 1-acre test patches of the tobacco
and may scale up production next year.
Vector has turned to these unconventional areas largely
because the company was virtually forced out of
traditional tobacco-growing areas.
A bill in the North Carolina Legislature would have
required anyone who wanted to possess the genetically
engineered tobacco to post a $1 million bond. Vector
officials argued that the proposed law would criminalize
possession of its tobacco, and the bill was later dropped.
Traditional tobacco producers are worried that genetically
modified leaves from Vector's plants will get mixed in
with their tobacco, Maksymowicz said. That could hurt
exports to Europe and Japan, where genetically modified
crops are regarded with suspicion, the critics contend.
But that scenario is not likely, Maksymowicz said.
Vector regards the leaf as a commodity and has exclusive
contracts with growers. The company has more to fear from
traditional tobacco, Maksymowicz said.
"If traditional tobacco mixed with ours, it would be
disastrous," he said.
The company located its fields in nontobacco areas partly
to protect the purity of its tobacco supply, he said.
The genetically engineered tobacco was an invention of
Mark A. Conkling, then a plant scientist at North Carolina
State University. Conkling and graduate student Wen Song
found a gene for a nicotine-producing enzyme in the roots
of tobacco plants.
Tobacco makes nicotine in its roots and then transports
the chemical to the leaves, where it helps protect the
plant from insects and disease.
The scientists transplanted a defective copy of the gene
into tobacco. In a process the scientists themselves don't
fully understand, the defective gene caused nicotine
production in the plant to shut down.
Trace amounts of nicotine are found in the tobacco leaves,
but no nicotine can be detected in the blood of people who
smoke cigarettes made from the leaves, said Conkling, now
Vector's vice president for genetic research.
The biotech tobacco also lacks some carcinogens, known as
tobacco-specific nitrosamines. These cancer-causing
chemicals form when nicotine combines with nitrous oxide
during the tobacco curing process and when the tobacco is
burned.
But critics doubt that the no-nicotine tobacco will keep
smokers from getting cancer, emphysema or other
smoking-related diseases.
"A cigarette is like a little toxic waste dump on
fire," said Dr. Stanton Glantz, a professor of
medicine at the University of California-San Francisco and
an outspoken critic of the tobacco industry.
Even if nitrosamines are eliminated or reduced, cigarettes
still contain more than 50 carcinogens and other toxic
chemicals. Vector's new cigarettes probably are not much
safer than traditional cigarettes, he said.
The company eventually hopes to market its new Omni Free
cigarettes as a smoking-cessation aid. Clinical trials are
under way to see if the cigarettes, perhaps in combination
with nicotine patches, can help people quit smoking.
But when Omni Free cigarettes hit stores next year, they
will only be touted as having reduced nicotine and
carcinogen levels.
Nicotine is addictive. But Vector officials say the
chemical is not the only thing that keeps smokers from
quitting. "There's a lot more to smoking than just
getting nicotine," Conkling said.
"People love to watch cigarette smoke go up in the
air," Conkling said. They also like the social
camaraderie of smoking with friends and co-workers, the
physical comfort of bringing a cigarette to their mouths
and other subtle habits that make up the entire smoking
experience.
Previous attempts to market cigarettes without nicotine
failed miserably, Glantz said. Those cigarettes were
chemically treated to remove nicotine from tobacco, but
the result was a cigarette that smokers said tasted
terrible.
Since Vector's tobacco only lacks nicotine, all the
flavor-producing chemicals are still there, Conkling said.
But even the new Omni Free cigarettes may lack the only
taste that counts to smokers.
"People don't smoke cigarettes to get the carcinogens
and the cardiovascular toxins," Glantz said.
"They smoke to get nicotine."
A long list of organizations -- among them the
National Farmers Union, the Council of Canadians, the
Saskatchewan Organic Directorate, the Canadian Health
Coalition and the Canadian Wheat Board -- demand that
Ottawa end its experimental planting of genetically
modified wheat. A representative from Greenpeace, which
opposes all genetically modified foods, declared that
these crops are "pollutants" and that
"the genetic modification of a staple crop such as
wheat is especially disconcerting."
If such Luddite anxieties are to become federal
policy, then we had better also undo the past century of
Canadian agriculture, and perhaps the three before that
just to be safe. The hard red spring wheat that
dominated cereal crops in northern countries throughout
the 20th century, and which made possible the settlement
of the North American bread basket is itself a human
invention, the result of crossbreeding a high-yielding
Canadian strain with a hearty one from India in the
early 1900s. In fact, if they want to be real biopurists,
Greenpeace and its confreres may also consider
advocating the removal of wheat from the continent
altogether. It is native only to southwest Asia, and was
introduced to Canada no earlier than 1605. Since then,
its genetic composition has undergone dozens of man-made
modifications. Just think of the untold
"environmental catastrophes" (to use a
favourite Greenpeace phrase) this evolution must have
wreaked on native grasses.
But we do not expect Greenpeace or its anti-tech
allies will have much patience with this reductio ad
absurdum appeal. Their campaign against progress -- the
character of which is embodied in the magnificent
propaganda word "frankenfood" -- is based on
ignorance, fear and falsehood. For two years, study
after study has shown that insect-resistant genetically
modified corn (known as Bt corn) does not, as
environmental scaremongers claim, threaten the monarch
butterfly. Yet, on the strength of an erroneous 1999
report that concluded otherwise, the monarch remains a
powerful symbol and rallying point for the anti-GM
moment. Truth is the first casualty of an organic diet.
The Green Revolution of the 1960s, which increased
grain production in India six-fold, was the result of
crossbreeding plants to create new strains that
exhibited the desirable qualities of both parent
species. Genetic engineering not only speeds up the
process, it permits scientists to borrow desirable genes
from a wider range of organisms. The primary
beneficiaries will be the world's poor. GM rice will
help prevent Vitamin-A deficiency, a condition that
every year causes hundreds of thousands of people in the
Third World to go blind. Other GM products will permit
crops to resist drought, floods and harsh soil. In the
future, vaccines will be delivered with bananas and
potatoes. Enemies of genetically modified crops have
become so engrossed in their subMarxist theories of
corporate conspiracy that they dismiss all of these
advances. They want to destroy the technologies of the
new green revolution, and they regard the impoverishment
and continued suffering of millions of poor people
around the world as an acceptable level of collateral
damage.
You
say Frankenfruit, we say miracle tomato
August 2
Japan Times
Prince Charles played into the hands
of the sensation-seeking media -- and drew the groans of
scientists -- with his comments last year on genetically
modified crops. They are, he said, ``Frankenstein
foods.`` Rather than genetic manipulation, he urged
investment in ``traditional systems of agriculture.``
So instead of any reasoned treatment of the issues, we
got a media feeding frenzy tacitly endorsed by a public
figure who might have better directed his words about
plants to his plants. If His Royal Highness` objections
to GM foods are due to misgivings about genetic
manipulation of their genome, which from the
Frankenstein comment they seem to be, then he confuses
the issue right from the start.
All farming is ``unnatural`` in this sense. All plants
grown commercially are freaks of nature -- peas are 10
times the volume of their ancestors in the wild; cobs of
corn are 30 times longer than those produced by natural
selection. The changes were brought about slowly, by
artificial selection acting to exaggerate existing
traits. With transgenic plants, big, new changes are
brought about very quickly -- and here`s where people
get worried, and newspaper writers get some juicy, scary
copy.
It`s definitely time for some good news for genetically
engineered plants. Their nutritional and ecological
potential is massive -- and is desperately needed. The
world`s population is still climbing and will peak in
2070, according to Wolfgang Lutz of the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg,
Austria. Nature today published Lutz`s findings that the
world population will level out at 8.4 billion and then
decline. The proportion of people over 60 will leap from
the current 10 percent to 34 percent, and nations in the
Southern Hemisphere will be increasingly dominant.
With an unprecedented number of mouths to feed, farmers
will need all the help they can get. Help comes now from
a U.S.-Canadian team of researchers into GM crops, who
seem to have cracked one of agriculture`s greatest
problems -- how to grow plants in saltwater. The paper
is published in the August issue of the journal Nature
Biotechnology.
More than a quarter of the world`s irrigated land is so
salty that little can grow; what can grow is stunted.
The loss of this farmable land is directly at odds with
the increasing world population. Developed countries
will require an estimated 20 percent more food over the
next 30 years; developing countries will need 60 percent
more. A return to ``traditional systems`` of
agriculture, while made with good intentions at heart,
is clearly unreasonable. No doubt the future king won`t
go without his dinner, but what about the rest of us?
Not to mention the millions in developing countries.
The researchers, Hong-Xia Zhang of the University of
Toronto and Eduardo Blumwald of the University of
California, Davis, made a tomato plant that can grow in
saltwater but produces normal, edible fruit. Sodium
affects so many cellular processes that it was believed
it would require highly complex engineering of many
genes to produce a plant that could tolerate saltwater.
Researchers, however, managed it by changing just a
single gene.
They took a DNA sequence containing a gene that
regulates the movement of sodium ions in thale cress, a
relative of the cabbage that is often used in plant
research, and introduced it into normal tomato plants.
The gene produces high levels of a ``transport protein``
that moves sodium into isolated chambers in the leaves.
The plants, effectively, were installed with a salt
pump. With the salt stashed safely away in the leaves,
the plants could grow normally. Fruit quality was
unchanged. Modified plants were able to grow in water
about a third as salty as seawater. At those
concentrations, nontransgenic tomato plants either died
or were severely stunted.
Blumwald hopes that a commercial breed of salt-tolerant
tomato plant will be available in three years, and that
other crops can also be genetically modified to grow in
salt-damaged soil or soil irrigated with salty water.
``Since environmental stress due to salinity is one of
the most serious factors limiting the productivity of
crops, this innovation will have significant
implications for agriculture worldwide,`` he said.
Crop irrigation gradually increases soil salinity as
sodium and other salts picked up as water drains through
rocks are deposited in the soil. With Zhang and
Blumwald`s breakthrough we have the chance to maintain a
traditional method of agriculture, as Prince Charles
wants, by using so-called ``Frankenstein`` genetics to
solve its inherent problems.
Scientists
find genetic basis of insect's resistance to engineered
crops
August 2
North Carolina State University press release
Genetically engineered crops with built-in
insecticides are an increasingly popular tool for
controlling agricultural pests. Some experts, however,
believe that using those modified crops could backfire
by forcing the development of genetically resistant
pests.
Now, a team of geneticists has identified a gene that
confers high levels of resistance in a common
agricultural pest – a discovery which will allow
farmers and government officials to take early steps to
prevent uncontrollable outbreaks.
The scientists published their findings in the Aug. 3
issue of the journal Science.
The geneticists, from North Carolina State
University, Clemson University and the University of
Melbourne, studied the DNA of the tobacco budworm moth (Heliothis
virescens), which feeds on a variety of crops and has
developed resistance to most conventional chemical
insecticides.
"Not only will knowledge about this gene enable
us to detect the early signs of pests evolving
resistance to the current engineered plants, it may also
allow us to modify the plants so they will be defended
against the new pest strains," said Dr. Fred L.
Gould, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of entomology
at NC State and a co-author on the Science paper.
Specifically, the researchers located the recessive
gene (BtR-4) that confers much of the resistance in the
moth to natural toxin from the soil bacterium called
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Several crops – including
cotton, which is a host plant for the moth's larvae –
have been genetically encoded with the insecticidal Bt
toxin, which kills all budworm moths except rare
individuals that contain a pair of the recessive genes.
The popular Bt crops give farmers a tool for
controlling pests like the tobacco budworm moth while
reducing the need for potentially dangerous chemical
pesticides. But some people, including organic farmers
who have long used naturally produced Bt bacteria for
controlling pests, worry that the new, genetically
altered crops could cause pests to rapidly develop
resistance to naturally produced Bt toxins as well as
the transgenic Bt toxins, leaving farmers without a
reliable organic pest-control agent.
To address these concerns, the Environmental
Protection Agency requires that cotton farmers plant at
least 4 percent of their fields with non-modified cotton
to ensure the dominant genes of susceptible moths remain
common in moth populations.
While resistant budworm moth strains have not yet
caused damage in the field, previous research by Gould
and his colleagues established that 1.5 of every 1,000
moths carry one of the genes for resistance to the Bt
toxin. Based on this frequency of resistance, the
researchers predicted that it would likely take about 10
years for Bt resistance in budworm moths to become a
problem if Bt cotton was widely planted. Those results
assume that cotton farmers are complying with the EPA's
"high-dose/refuge" mandate.
Researchers and government regulators have had
difficulty verifying whether the EPA's strategy is
slowing the spread of resistance, however, because of
the difficulty in measuring the frequency of moths with
a pair of the resistant genes.
Conventional bioassay-based monitoring methods, which
count the number of moths that are resistant to the Bt
toxin, are not sensitive enough because resistant
individuals are quite rare. Instead, Gould and his
colleagues recommend using a DNA-based method of
identifying moths that have only one of the genes (moths
that are heterozygous for the gene) as well as those
that have both (those that are homozygous).
"Monitoring resistance allele frequencies in
field populations will enable a direct test of whether
the high-dose/refuge strategy is succeeding," the
researchers write in Science. "If it starts to
fail, tracking the increasing heterozygote frequencies
will sound a warning well before resistant homozygotes
become frequent enough to cause uncontrollable
outbreaks."
Such a strategy, they say, could give researchers and
government regulators enough time to adjust the
resistance management strategy – by increasing the
percent of fields left as "refuges," for
example – to reverse the increase in resistant moths.
At the least, they say, current bioassay-based
monitoring programs should preserve DNA samples from
moths, so that researchers can have a DNA bank to
analyze other resistance genes that are discovered in
the moths.
But, the authors add, "any delay in initiating
BtR-4 allele monitoring erodes the opportunity to make
informed modifications to the high-dose/refuge strategy,
that could sustain use of Bt-transgenics and prolong the
environmental benefits they bring by reducing the use of
conventional insecticides."
The co-authors on the Science paper were Gould, Dr.
Linda J. Gahan of Clemson University and Dr. David G.
Heckel of the University of Melbourne in Australia, who
was project leader. The research was funded by the
National Science Foundation, and it builds upon earlier
research by Gould and Heckel that was funded by the USDA
Competitive Research Grants Initiative.
Mississippi
cotton growers applying less insecticides
August 2
AgWeb.com
The successful combination of boll weevil eradication
efforts and Bt cotton have greatly reduced the number of
foliar insecticide treatments applied this year by
Mississippi cotton growers.
However, one consequence of the overall reduction in
the number of sprays is that stink bugs are becoming
more established in cotton fields and causing damage.
Historically, organophosphate and/or pyrethroid sprays
targeted against other pests coincidentally controlled
stink bugs and prevented them from becoming a problem.
But, in low spray environments, stink bugs can become a
serious, but easily controlled, problem during mid and
late season, entomologists note in the weekly insect
report from Mississippi State University.
Stink bugs damage bolls by piercing the boll wall
with their long stylets and feeding on the developing
seed, the report explained. External damage often
appears as a small, dark sunken spot on the boll wall.
Cracking damaged bolls will reveal stained areas of lint
and/or small wart-like growths on the inside of the boll
wall.
Stink bugs can feed on bolls that are quite mature,
but they prefer immature bolls that are approximately
the diameter of a quarter, the entomologists pointed
out. Damage results in bolls that appear "hard
locked" or fail to open properly. Boll damage can
occur any time of the season when bolls are present, but
because stink bug populations are usually highest during
late season, the top crop usually suffers the greatest
damage.
The ground cloth is one of the best methods of
scouting for stink bugs. Adult stink bugs will sometimes
fly off while the cloth is being positioned and it is
important to be observant and count any adults that you
see fly off before the sample is taken, the
entomologists noted. Treat if counts average or exceed 1
bug per 6 row feet.
