High and Dry
Research Report
High and Dry: Why Genetic Engineering Is Not Solving Agriculture’s Drought Problem in a Thirsty World
Doug Gurian-Sherman
Copyright Date: Jun. 1, 2012
Published by: Union of Concerned Scientists
Pages: 39
OPEN ACCESS
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep00061
Table of Contents
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-ii)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. iii-iii)
  3. Figures
    Figures (pp. iii-iii)
  4. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. iv-iv)
  5. Executive Summary
    Executive Summary (pp. 1-5)
  6. Chapter 1. Introduction
    Chapter 1. Introduction (pp. 6-6)

    Humanity faces a steep challenge this century: increasing food production without causing tremendous harm to the environment. Advocates of genetic engineering have promoted it as an important way to meet this challenge.

    In two previous reports, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) examined claims that genetic engineering could increase the yield of crops, and improve the efficiency by which they use nitrogen (Gurian-Sherman 2009; Gurian-Sherman and Gurwick 2009). We concluded that genetically engineered (GE) traits increase the overall yield of corn modestly, and do not increase the yield of soybeans—the two major U.S. crops. We also found no GE...

  7. Chapter 2. The Complexity of Drought and Efforts to Address It
    Chapter 2. The Complexity of Drought and Efforts to Address It (pp. 7-13)

    Drought is one of the most serious causes of lost crop productivity globally, although exact figures for these losses depend on the definition of drought. In the United States, insurance payments to farmers to cover crop losses stemming from drought totaled nearly $3 billion in 2002 (Wilhite, Svoboda, and Hayes 2007).

    In years when serious droughts occur in major food-producing regions, crop losses can affect the global food supply and food prices. This occurred in 2008, when Australia, a major global wheat producer, lost substantial production because of severe drought (Headey and Fan 2008).

    Scientists project that global warming will...

  8. Chapter 3. The Pipeline of Drought-Tolerant GE Crops
    Chapter 3. The Pipeline of Drought-Tolerant GE Crops (pp. 14-21)

    Only one GE drought-tolerant crop is now commercially available: corn (Zea mays L.) containing the bacterial cspB gene, developed by Monsanto—a variety known as DroughtGard. However, developers have conducted field trials of other GE drought-tolerant crops in the United States.

    The first 16 years of commercialized GE crops focused on genes that confer resistance to herbicides or insect pests.³ DroughtGard offers a new type of GE trait, and is also the first GE variety to address a climate-change related challenge. This product is therefore important not only in its own right, but also to show that the technology can...

  9. Chapter 4. Prospects for GE Drought-Tolerant Crops
    Chapter 4. Prospects for GE Drought-Tolerant Crops (pp. 22-25)

    Proponents of genetic engineering often cite improved drought tolerance as an important benefit of the technology. This confidence is primarily based on the pipeline of experimental GE drought-tolerant crops, as cited in the scientific literature and field trials in the United States and other countries.

    However, the prospects of experimental crops warrant some caution, for several reasons. In their review of GE drought-tolerant genes and crops, Yang et al. (2010) find that the majority of such crops have been tested only in controlled conditions, such as greenhouses. As they note, and as Chapter 3 also noted, scientists cannot accurately predict...

  10. Chapter 5. Conclusions and Recommendations
    Chapter 5. Conclusions and Recommendations (pp. 26-28)

    About 16 years after developers first commercialized crops genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, only one drought-tolerant GE crop has been approved for commercialization. This may reflect the greater complexity of engineering crops that are drought tolerant.

    The scientific literature suggests that scientists have resolved several major obstacles to GE drought tolerance in the past 10 years. These include finding single genes, such as plant transcription factors, that may improve the drought tolerance of crops despite its genetic complexity, and learning to control the function of these genes more precisely, to reduce the possibility that they will interfere...

  11. References
    References (pp. 29-34)