www.checkbiotech.org ; www.czu.cz ; www.raupp.info

The irony of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) ? which some want to see spared
from genetic manipulation through biotechnology ? is that the genetic
manipulation of this crop over thousands of years makes decoding and thus
?manipulating? the genes of bread wheat all the more difficult today, April
2006 by Tracy Sayler.

Wheat started out as a grass, and about 9,000 years ago, wild einkorn
wheat was harvested in the Fertile Crescent. Then around 8,000 years ago, a
mutation or hybridization occurred within emmer wheat, resulting in a plant
with seeds that were larger, but could not sow themselves through the wind.
While this plant could not have succeeded in the wild, it produced more food
for humans, and within cultivated fields, it outcompeted plants with
smaller, self-sowing seeds to become the primary ancestor of modern wheat
breeds.

"All of this genetic engineering (hybridizing) was conducted thousands of
years ago by ancient farmers completely unaware of modern genetics or the
difficulty of hybridizing polyploid plants," explains Answers.com
(http://www.answers.com/topic/wheat).

Bread wheat today is referred to as a ?hexaploid? species (6x chromosomes),
containing three different ancestral genomes, each of which has seven pairs
of chromosomes, for a total of 42 chromosomes. The amount of DNA within
wheat over thousands of years of transformation makes for an incredibly
complex genetic soup. The bread wheat genome is one of the largest and most
complex of all crop species, and in fact is even more complex than the human
genome. The size of the wheat genome is approximately 13.5 gigabases; the
human genome is only about 3 gigabases.

National Association of Wheat Growers Urges Biotech Wheat Needless to say,
constructing a genetic road map of wheat is a long, tedious process because
of the sheer amount of material to be mapped. Bikram Gill, Kansas State
University, explained efforts now underway to sequence the wheat genome at
the recent Grain Congress in San Antonio, representing the annual meeting of
the National Association of Wheat Growers. Gill, recognized as an
international expert in wheat genetics research, heads a team responsible
for mapping the genome of the wheat plant so breeders can identify important
genetic traits and create new varieties of wheat with specific desirable
characteristics, like more resistance to disease and insects, and better
end-use traits. More information about this effort can be found online at
[www.wheatgenome.org].

Also at that meeting, the National Association of Wheat Growers and U.S.
Wheat Associates approved several amendments and additions to their
Biotechnology Position Statement. Among the provisions was a joint
resolution of the USW/NAWG to "support continued research and development of
Syngenta?s fusarium tolerance transgenic trait in wheat and ? work
proactively with stakeholders in the food system for the benefit of
customers and consumers worldwide, U.S. wheat producers and the whole U.S.
wheat industry."

The Scientific Cost of Not Pursuing GM Wheat

Forrest Chumley, associate director for research at Kansas State University,
says that in science, success is the best recruiting tool, and failure to
develop and commercialize biotech traits may lead to a decline in wheat
research investments, reduced student enrollments, and lost research
opportunities in the future.

Chumley discussed "the scientific cost of not pursuing genetically-modified
wheat" during the research forum at the Grain Congress. In science, there is
a certain amount of competition for research talent, he says, and success is
the best recruiting tool. Without biotech, Chumley speculated, "can we
continue to attract the best and brightest to wheat research and education?"

Chumley also speculates that the wheat research field may stagnate and be
bypassed by the Ag research community?s "best and brightest" without
biotechnology.

Chumley says wheat as a research field has been "moderately" successful in
non-biotech research advancements, but has failed at making strides within
biotechnology. He says there are several reasons why investment in wheat
biotech has been comparatively low compared to other crops:


Wheat is generally viewed as a "low value" commodity, with low value inputs.

Wheat is a commodity fragmented by six types or classes, making the
tremendous expense of developing a biotech trait more difficult to recover.

Planted acres have been in steady decline since 1980, even before the
arrival of biotechnology.

Wheat has a complex, challenging molecular genetics background that makes
biotech research more tedious than in other crops.

Transgenic wheat research has a comparatively small community, with very
little private research.

There is a lack of "pull" from the industry.


The continued acceptance of other biotech crops around the world ? including
more acreage and more biotech crops (rice is around the corner) ? will help
pave the way for wheat, says Chumley. "Biotechnology represents the most
rapid adoption of any agricultural technology ever,? he says. "There isn?t
one credible case of someone becoming sick by this technology."

Chumley says that of 12,173 field test permits granted by USDA-APHIS since
1987 for researching crop biotech traits, 5,535 have been for corn (45.4%)
and 396 for wheat (3.2%). "That?s about a 15-fold difference, and I don?t
think corn is 15 times more important than wheat."

He says that the earliest permit filed with APHIS was in 1994 by Monsanto to
test glyphosate tolerance. The work was shelved by the company a decade
later because of resistance to the technology. Chumley says there were just
three public biotech wheat field test permits pending as of early 2006,
filed by the University of Minnesota, Kansas State University, and Oklahoma
State University. He says public biotech wheat research now is focused on
drought and fusarium resistance.

"In biotech we have a trait that promises to take a dangerous toxin out of
the food supply, so why not," says Chumley, referring to DON or vomitoxin
from scabby wheat. "But with increased biotech acceptance, biotech will be
hard to keep out of wheat. It will come."

[www.isb.vt.edu]

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