Developing a Swiss GM plant

Choice of plant and gene

So far my focus has been on climate change induced problems and plants adapted to the same. Researches about drought resistant GM plants have been very efficient and I found out that there have been much more studies to this topic than I expected. That’s why I decided to devote this blog entry to a quite different upcoming issue: soil salinity. Salinity has increased in agricultural soils for many reasons. Due to intensive fertilization there has been accumulation of salt ions. Further to mention is the high amount of salt being distributed in winter to defrost our roads. On one side, it can get directly into the soil by draining away with the melting snow and on the other side it gets into our sewage water system and then in public water bodies which are often used for irrigation. Above all, drier summers mean less rain that could wash away the salts and therefore mitigate the salinization.

As wheat is the most cultivated crop in Switzerland, I’d like to design a highly salt-tolerant wheat sort. Maas and Hoffman (1977) call wheat a moderately salt-tolerant crop. [1] The newly created crop would be even more tolerant, as this statement was issued in 1977 and soil salinity surely has increased since then.

To enhance salt tolerance the osmoregulation has to be modified. Two possible ways of doing so are called “salt exclusion” as well as “tissue tolerance” and are described by Munns R., James R. and Läuchli A. (2005) [2] Genes being responsible for these strategies we find in halophyte. [3] Halophytes are plants that are adapted to places with naturally higher salt concentration, e.g. beaches. I’d like to take the appropriate gene from Thellungiella parvula, known as salt cress. Its genome has been sequenced recently [4] and is available in the gene bank. T. parvula is closely related to Arabidopsis thaliana which has been used for genomic experiments numerously.

Arguments for further research

The Swiss National Foundation should finance my project for the following two reasons:

• Wheat is the most commonly cultivated crop in Switzerland and a staple food worldwide. Hugh annually crop loss can be prevented by supporting researches concerning wheat.

• Soil salinity is a newer, upcoming issue in Swiss agriculture that is not yet paid enough attention at.

If I were the person responsible for grants at the Swiss National Foundation I would probably not finance this project due to the fact, that there already exist some studies and experiments have been carried out on the subject. Furthermore, with Switzerland’s commitments to produce more sustainable I’d rather support studies that look for avoidance of salinization such as more efficiently fertilisation or environmentally friendlier winter services.

References

[1] Maas EV, Hoffman GJ. (1977). Crop salt tolerance – current assessment. Journal of the Irrigation and 

         Drainage Division of the American Society of Civil Engineering 103, 115–134.

[2] Munns R., James R. and Läuchli A. (2006). Approaches to increasing the salt tolerance of wheat and other 

         cereals. Journal of Experimental Botany 57, 1025-1043

[3] Colmer TD et al. (2005). Improving salt tolerance of wheat and barley: future prospects. Australian Journal 

          of Experimental Agriculture 45, 1425-1443

[4] Dassanayake M et al. (2011). The genome of the extremophile crucifer Thellungiella parvula. Nature 

          Genetics 43, 913-918

GM plants – what has already been done?

A scientific literature study

In the last blog I wrote about upcoming challenges in Swiss agriculture. One of the main subjects was the climate change and all its related issues like hotter and drier summer or water scarcity. In todays blog I’m going to write about water shortage and how this problem is being approached nowadays.

Specifically the focus will be on the transgenic plants efficient use of water. My reference article was written by Eleonora Cominelli and Chiara Tonelli at the University of Milan with the title “Transgenic crops coping with water scarcity”.[1]

I chose this paper as it is written in an understandable and still scientific way. Furthermore, it gives a good overview of the basics of genetic modification of plants in general and related to water stress in detail.

Cominelli and Tonelli are stating the availability of water or more specific its absence as one of the main causes of limited crop harvest worldwide. As environmental factors or water situations are not changed that easily the authors see promising possibilities in genetically modified plants. Therefore, they name two different goals: develop plants that have improved water use efficiency and improved drought resistance. These goals are approached by manipulating the plants osmoregulation. In general this is achieved by inserting genes that lead to an overproduction of osmoprotectants or an overexpression in transcriptional regulators. Transcriptional regulators are often involved in plant reactions to drought stress. Moreover, a plant mutant is mentioned in the paper that has increased stoma closure and reduced stoma density what results in better drought tolerance.

All the approaches mentioned have successfully been tested on thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana). Thale cress is not used commercially and often being considered as weed. However, prosperous experiments have been carried out with maize and rice too. Other papers also named tomato, tobacco plants, barley, wheat, soybean and potato as being affected by water scarcity and suitable plants for these methods.[2],[3],[4],[5]

For Swiss agriculture wheat, barley, maize and tomato are the most interesting ones. Nevertheless, personally I think scientific research focus should be on wheat, rice and potato as these are staple food to millions of people worldwide. Furthermore, a well-developed country like Switzerland with agriculture in comparably small scale might also be interested in alternative solutions like drip irrigation (Tröpfchenbewässerung), as already practiced with hors-sol tomatoes for example. 

References

[1] Cominelli E. and Tonelli C. (2010). Transgenic crop coping with water scarcity. Found 12.04.2014 on Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=transgenic+crop+coping+with+water+scarcity

[2] Begcy K. et al. (2011). A novel stress-induced sugarcane gene confers tolerance to drought, salt and oxidative stress in transgenic tobacco plants. Found 12.04.2014 on Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=A+Novel+Stress-Induced+Sugarcane+Gene+Confers+Tolerance+to+Drought%2C+Salt+and+Oxidative+Stress+in+Transgenic+Tobacco+Plants

[3] Bahieldin A. (2005). Field evaluation of transgenic wheat plants stably expressing the HVA1 gene for drought tolerance. Found 12.04.2014 on: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1399-3054.2005.00470.x/abstract

[4] Quan R. et al. (2004). Engineering of enhanced glycine betaine synthesis improves drought tolerance in maize. Found 12.04.2014 on Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Quan%2C+R.+et+al.+%282004%29+Engineering+of+enhanced+glycine+betaine+synthesis+improves+drought+tolerance+in+maize.+Plant+Biotechnol.+J.+2%2C+477%E2%80%93486

[5] Hu H. (2006). Overexpressing a NAM, ATAF, and CUC (NAC) transcription factor enhances drought resistance and salt tolerance in rice. Found 12.04.2014 on Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Hu%2C+H.+et+al.+%282006%29+Overexpressing+a+NAM%2C+ATAF%2C+and+CUC+%28NAC%29+transcription+factor+enhances+drought+resistance+and+salt+tolerance+in+rice.+Proc.+Natl.+Acad.+Sci.+U.+S.+A.+103%2C+12987%E2%80%9312992

GM plants in Swiss agriculture - possibilities and constraints

The Swiss population calls for an agricultural sector which meets market demands and operates in an environmentally friendly way. Meadows and pasture make up a full three quarters of Swiss farmland, with cereals and vegetables being confined to the lowlands. About one third of farms are involved in crop production. While many Swiss people still have a romantic image of what agriculture in Switzerland should look like, changes that have occurred within and outside the country have had a great impact on Swiss agricultural. Today famers have to compete on the market and protection against international competition has been reduced.

1.       Small fields – high cost, what other challenges is Swiss Agriculture facing?
Find out the most demanding current issues and future challenges in Swiss agriculture.
2.       A farmer in the Thurgau would like to grow GM sugar beets. Which constraints would this endeavour face? What additional constraints would apply to other GM plants?

Challenges for Swiss Agriculture 
Agriculture has a long tradition in the history of Switzerland. It has already faced and successfully coped with various crises such as two World Wars and pest infestations. Challenges like these led to the fact that Swiss agriculture has continuously changed and developed over the past few decades. However, so have the issues and challenges. Nowadays we are confronted with completely different but nonetheless alarming problems too. The most complex and globally-discussed one is the subject of climate change (BAFU, 2013). Connected to this broad topic are several agriculture-related challenges. Longer and drier summers are expected as well as more extreme weather events, hotter summer days and more precipitation-intensive winter periods. Suitable adaptions in crop production and livestock husbandry are being sought for. Furthermore, water scarcity is an upcoming issue for Switzerland too (Fuhrer J., 2014). For this reason, there are investigations for new forms of irrigation and more efficient water usage. Another major challenge drives Switzerland’s ambition to reduce its emission of greenhouse gases. Therefore, farmers are being encouraged to produce in an environmentally-friendly way. To do this, they face the challenge of producing ecologically while still making a satisfactory profit. Examples of this conflict are the extent of fertilizer usage or standard trees (Hochstamm) vs. shorter trees (Niederstamm) (LID-1, 2014). Minor, but still relevant, challenges are the limited availability of cultivatable land and the falling number of practicing farmers (Swissworld).

Genetically modified sugar beet 
Sugar is a sweetener for which there is high demand. Around one quarter of the worldwide sugar production is gained by cultivating sugar beet (LID-2, 2014), and 7’500 Swiss farmers grow it. All sugar beet grown in Switzerland is delivered to one of its two sugar mills, Aarberg (BE) or Frauenfeld (TG) (LID-3, 2014). The sugar produced is a 100 per cent Swiss-product and therefore gets the label “Suisse Garantie”. This label guarantees ecological cultivation and full production in Switzerland. Another important condition of this label is that no genetically modified organisms are used (AMS, 2014). A Thurgau farmer is therefore not able to deliver his sugar beet to the nearby sugar mill in Frauenfeld. Moreover, it makes no sense to deliver it to an foreign sugar mill either. Cultivation of any GM plant is currently still not allowed in Swiss agriculture. However, a change of the ‘Gentechnikgesetz’ (GTG) has been under discussion since 2003. In 2005 the Swiss people voted for a moratorium on GM species in agriculture that is valid till the end of 2017 (Bundesrat, 2013). GM plant cultivation might be allowed in Switzerland at some point in the future, but there’s still a long way to go until this occurs. 

References 
AMS – Agro-Marketing Suisse. (2014). Ohne Gentechnik. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.suissegarantie.ch/de/das-ist-suisse-garantie/ohne-gentechnik.html 
BAFU. (2013). Issues related to Agriculture. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.bafu.admin.ch/klima/00470/11777/12570/index.html?lang=de 
Bundesrat. (2013). GVO-Anbau: Bundesrat schickt Koexistenzregelung in die Vernehmlassung. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: https://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=de&msg-id=47594 
Fuhrer J. (2014). Minimising water use, maintaining productivity. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.snf.ch/en/researchinFocus/newsroom/Pages/mm-140107-wasserbedarf-minimieren-produktivitaet-erhalten.aspx 
LID-1 – Landwirtschaftlicher Informationsdienst. (2014). Fruit Cultivation. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von http://www.agriculture.ch/en/facts/plants/fruits/ 
LID-2 – Landwirtschaftlicher Informationsdienst. (2014). Zuckerrübenbau. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.agriculture.ch/de/wissen/pflanzen/zuckerruebenbau/ 
LID-3 – Landwirtschaftlicher Informationsdienst. (2014). Growing Sugar Beets. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.agriculture.ch/en/facts/plants/sugar-beets/ 
Swissworld. Current challenges. Abgerufen am 13.03.2014 von: http://www.swissworld.org/en/economy/farming/current_challenges/