Egypt to Produce Bt Cotton Soon
January 5, 2012 By Prof. Mohamed Abdel Hakeem Nagib
Director, Cotton Research Institute
The use of genetically modified crops were begun – at least in terms of commercial cultivation – in 1996. The amount of land dedicated to these crops has increased gradually in the years since, and today, there are 14 countries around the globe that produce genetically modified crops, including many of the world’s top producers: China, India, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa, among others.
Genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton is planted on about 9 million hectares across the world. It is easy to understand why there has been such growth: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported a noticeable improvement of farmers’ income as a result of using GM crops in developing countries.
Monsanto, one of the largest and most well-known GM crop production companies in the United States, developed the Bt cotton variety of upland cotton by genetically transferring a “killer” gene to the plant from a Lepidoptera-pathogenic bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis. In 1996, growers in the United States began to cultivate this resistant strain of cotton, which took the first two letters of the bacteria’s scientific name.
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The cotton crop is typically infected by a host of harmful pests, especially Lepidoptera insects (such as leaf worms and boll worms), which cause significant damage both to the yield and to total cotton production numbers. Consequently, this problem leads to excessive use of chemical pesticides to control these insects.
However, the wide application of chemical pesticides has many detrimental effects on human and animal health, as well as that of the overall environment. That’s why the science of genetic engineering has become so important: It is one of the best and most innovative methods we have of addressing and overcoming the problem of achieving higher yields without expanding the use of pesticides and chemicals.
In 2000, the Agricultural Research Center – part of Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Restoration, and a member of the National Agriculture Research Information Management System – assigned a protocol with Monsanto to produce Egyptian Bt cotton varieties which, technically, failed to directly transfer the gene to the Egyptian cotton varieties because of the nature of the Egyptian cotton genome.
However, the Egyptian researchers of the Cotton Research Institute – which was founded in 1913, even before the Ministry of Agriculture – could indirectly transfer this gene by crossing the resistant upland cotton with the Egyptian cotton, and backcross to the Egyptian cotton for many generations. This helped to restore the quality characters of Egyptian cotton in addition to adding the resistant gene.
In the end, the Cotton Research Institute succeeded in obtaining four Egyptian Bt cotton varieties – G.80, G.90, G.85 and G.89, although they are still considered to be under experimental status – for now.
In 2007, the team at the Cotton Research Institute began a new program to produce breeder seeds from these Egyptian Bt varieties (especially G.80 and G.90), and expectations are that these two strains will be commercially cultivated in the next few years.
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