Bio Engineered Grains – Pros & Cons

Genetically modified or bioengineered foods have been gracing the news as of late. This is perhaps because of the on-going protest against the production of such kind of product. Bioengineered foods technically refer to crops, like grains for instance, which have been genetically modified to carry enhanced characteristics or traits such as having enhanced nutritional content or increased herbicide resistance.

Grains are being modified and upgraded in the laboratory to introduce better gene traits. Although enhancing the traits can be naturally done through breeding, this process is mostly inaccurate and very time-consuming. Genetic engineering offers a better and efficient way of altering the traits of grains more accurately and rapidly. Depending on what trait they want to introduce, certain genes can be transferred or removed from grains and other plants.

The Pros

One of the obvious advantage of bio-engineering grains and other food products is ensuring that there will be sufficient food supply to feed the world’s continuously booming population. Today, the world population has estimated to be around 6 billion and genetic modification of grains, so as with other products, will help address the issue about the adequacy of food supply in the coming years. Some of the advantages that grain and crop growers can attain from bioengineering or genetic modification are as follows:

Resistance to Common Plant Diseases
Bioengineering grains and other crops will increase the grain’s resistant to common plant viruses, bacteria and fungi. Like human beings, plants are also susceptible to disease-causing microorganisms. When contracted, they can cause the plant to die and wither. Therefore to avoid this, genetically modifying grains and crops will help increase their resistance to typical and emerging plant diseases.

Improve Resistance to Pests
A lot of grains and crops have been lost due to pests. Because of this, grain growers found an effective way to avoid such losses through genetic modification. Significant financial loss can be prevented by farmers by bioengineering their grains and crops to have higher resistance to pest.

Consumers, these days, have now increased awareness with regards to the use of pesticides in crops. When grains and crops went through the process of bioengineering farmers can cut their losses and eliminate the need to use pesticides altogether.

Development of Tolerance to Drought
With the growing population, more and more lands are now being used for housing which could otherwise be utilized for crop production. Because of this farmers have no other choice but to grow grains and other crops in locations that are deemed to be unsuitable for cultivating crops. Bio-engineering is now being used to create grains and other types of crops that are capable of withstanding extreme drought, groundwater and high salt content in soils. By doing so, farmers would be able to effectively and successfully grow grains and crops in growing locations that were deemed inhospitable.

The Cons

Like any other things ever developed in this world, bio-engineering grains also come with certain downsides.

Creation of Tougher Pests
A study showed that genetically modified grains and crops that are designed to produce their own pesticides are likely to form tougher pests.

Unintended transfer of Modified Genes to Non-Target Species
There has been a growing concern about bio-engineered grains and plants, modified to have herbicide tolerance, cross breeding with weeds. When this happens, the herbicide resistance engineered to grains and crops will be transferred to weeds, thus, creating what is called as ‘super weeds’. This means that weeds will also build immunity against herbicides.