Eleven years ago when I began my career as

a professor at the University of Florida, I would

enjoy the sunny drives downstate from
Gainesville. As Id progress further south, the
landscape became dominated by a truly
beautiful sightlush orange groves bearing
Floridas iconic fruit. The sea of dark green
foliage contrasted the cloudless blue sky, and
was punctuated with frequent spots of bright
orange. Its scale was amazing, a credit to the
farmers that grew them and the plant breeders
that coalesced favorable genetics into elite
productive trees bearing succulent fruit. It was a
combination of plant genetics, orchard
management and a magical environment that
produced this wonderful sight.
Today, the same drive is remarkably different.
Many of the groves that stood as a jungle of
leaves and frequent fruits now stand as gray
skeletal botanical remains. Bare branches
extend coldly above untended weeds below,
choking out whats left of occasional patches of
yellowing leaves and an occasional small green
fruit. Devastation is hardly complete. Other
groves have remained productive, but only
through intensive management and high cost.
Even in these cases the leaves are noticeably
yellow and the oranges fall easily from the trees
to the ground below, unusable.
The Florida citrus industry knows this decline
as the disease huanlongbing, also known as
citrus greening. The disease is a complex web of
symptoms caused by a bacterial colonization of
the plants vital vascular tissues, blocking
nutrient ow, reducing root mass and choking
out nutrition to tissues that need it. Infected
trees may stand for years before developing
symptoms. They also may unknowingly spread
the pathogen. The disease travels from tree to
tree, vectored by an insect called the Asian
citrus psyllid, a small creature with penetrating
mouth parts that become contaminated with the
bacteria before passing it to the next tree. As of
the writing of this article, it is estimated that
70 percent of Floridas trees are infected. The
disease has also been identied in California,
Texas and Brazil, as well as many other places in
the world. Because of its long-latent period, a
minor patch of infection is a cold harbinger of a
much larger problem to come.
To combat the problem plant breeders have
sprung to action. There is a worldwide search for
resistant trees, trees containing a gene that may
make the tree unattractive to the psyllid, genes
that could block the bacterium, or perhaps
genes that allow the tree to live just ne while
infected. If found, such a gene could be bred
into elite orange varieties, conferring resistance
and slowing, if not ending, the disease. But even
if that gene was identied today, it would take
years to breed it into existing plants, as each
generation of trees only owers after years in the
eld. Obtaining the correct combination of good
genes against the greening disease and keeping
the good genes that support fruit productivity
might take decades. A vital industry that
produces a healthy and delicious product cannot
wait that long.
Solutions Exist
Disease-resistance genes are well understood
in plants and hundreds of them have been
characterized. We eat thousands of them and
their products in every salad. These genes encode
proteins that oppose microbial growth through a
wide variety of mechanisms. What if one of these
resistance genes could be moved from something
like an apple tree, spinach plant or maybe a small
weed to citrusand then arrest citrus-greening
disease? Such transfers across diverse species by
traditional breeding are just not possible, as it is
as difcult to cross a grapefruit tree with a banana
as it is to cross a mouse with an elephant.
But what if that one effective disease-
resistance gene, naturally occurring in a food
plant we already eat, could be placed into the
citrus tree, making it immune, or at least
tolerant, to the disease? It could be done, it has
Disease-resistance genes
are well understood in
plants and hundreds
of them have been
characterized. We eat
thousands of them and
their products in every
salad. These genes
encode proteins that
oppose microbial growth
through a wide variety
of mechanisms. What if
one of these resistance
genes could be moved
from something like an
apple tree, spinach plant
or maybe a small weed to
citrusand then arrest
citrus-greening disease?
GMO Technology is Simply
Precision Breeding
BY KEVIN M. FOLTA
I
n need of a solution
been done, and the plants seem to thus far
do well in greenhouse trials hot with the
disease. Here the gene that helps the plant
survive the disease was simply plucked from
one plant (in this case a gene from spinach)
and moved to citrus using a process that has
been with us for decadesrecombinant DNA
technology. Many other recombinant DNA, or
transgenic (commonly referred to as
genetically modied organism [GMO])
solutions, are in the works and show promise.
While not commercially available, the
example from oranges shows how the
transfer of a gene from one species to
another can work to potentially solve a
monumental problem. Moving a gene is what
plant breeders have done for thousands of
years, shufing the genetic deck with
human-mediated hybridizations to try to place
a stack of favorable genes into one single
genetic background. Every fruit or vegetable
you eat today has been genetically remodeled
by plant breeders, crossing plants that would
typically never hybridize without human
intervention and signicant cost. The genetic
mixes have been guided by careful hunches,
observations and maybe some genetic
knowhow, but in general the process has a
major element of randomness and is fraught
with unknowns. Breeders know they moved
the gene of interest if they can follow the trait
it confers, but theres no easy way to account
for the other negative genetic baggage that
travels along, or the good genes that may be
lost. Some plant breeders have used
chemicals and radiation to damage DNA and
induce genetic changes. These practices, and
many others that are surprisingly random,
dramatic and unnatural, are the foundation of
many foods we eat, and have never been
questioned for safety. It simply is another way
to generate genetic variation, the basis of a
new valuable trait.
But what if a researcher were to move that
one understood gene, rather than a genome
full of thousands of unknowns? What if a
gene could be moved to an elite variety
without losing favorable traits, just gaining the
one desired trait? This is the process of
creating a transgenic plant, also thought of as
a GMO. The GMO is indeed a misnomer, as
GMO crops undergo almost no genetic
modication relative to the massive
restructurings that come with conventional
breeding. Making a transgenic plant moves a
single understood gene into a new plant,
bringing with it the trait of interest. For
example, in citrus this might be a gene that
makes the plant immune or asympomatic to
the greening disease.
Recent examples show how the technology
can lead to healthier products. In rice, such
engineering has been used to introduce a
pair of genes that allows rice to produce
beta-carotene, the orange-yellow pigments in
carrots. Upon consumption, the beta-carotene
is converted to vitamin A, and could possibly
alleviate disease and blindness caused by
vitamin A deciency. This solution remains in
development, now moving into productive rice
cultivars prior to deployment. The rice will be
donated, royalty-free, to small farmers.
Another possibility is using a potatos own
gene sequence to shut off genes associated
with the production of asparagine (an amino
acid) in the potato tuber. Potatoes produce a
small yet signicant amount of acrylamide
when cooked at high temperatures, based on
natural chemical reactions with asparagine.
Acrylamide is toxic, so decreasing asparagine
in the potato tuber could make a more
healthful potato.
These two examples are not science ction.
They are all plants that have been designed to
produce desirable products containing an
important trait. Many more are being developed
and will bring benets to consumers, farmers,
the needy or the environment.
These benets have been realized already.
In 17 years of cultivation, GMO crops have
ensured farmer yields and brought great
environmental benets. There is no question
that farmers appreciate these seeds for the
traits they bring, making it protable to
produce agronomic crops like corn, canola,
soybeans and cotton. Some of these crops
are grown with a trait that allows elds to be
treated with mild herbicides (namely
glyphosate, a compound with the acute
toxicity of table salt, replacing less safe
herbicides) to combat competing weeds.
Others have a gene that leads to the
production of a protein that is toxic only to
larvae of specic insects, stopping crop
damage without insecticidal sprays. These
An inspector for the Florida Division of Plant Industry slaps Asian citrus psyllid (the
insects responsible for the bacterium that causes citrus greening) from a grapefruit tree.
Source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Originally published in the Washington Post online Jan. 12, 2014
genes and their products have been studied
for decades and are among the most
well-understood genes and gene products in
plant biology. However, these plant lines have
mostly beneted the farmer and the
environment, as farmers achieve desired
yields with fewer inputs (less fuel, labor,
chemicals), less soil disturbance and certainly
less broad-spectrum insecticide. The
technology works. Thats why farmers use it.
Ninety-some percent of corn, soy, cotton and
canola acreage is GMO.
Of course, every technology has limitations.
The widespread use of herbicide-resistant
crops has opened opportunities for resistant
weeds to thrive in elds, as their competitors
are killed off by herbicide. This selection for
surviving weeds has led to widespread
invasion of resistant-weed species that will
need new technologies to again suppress.
Solutions are being developed to slow this
evolutionary arms race.
In any situation there are benets and
risks, and the emergence of resistant weeds
is certainly a limitation of the technology. Yet
in 17 years of intensive cultivation, these
crops have delivered far more benetsthey
allow farmers to remain protable, keep food
costs low, and provide renewable sources of
fuels and bers. Products from these crops
appear in 70 percent of grocery store foods,
and since their deployment almost two
decades ago, there has not been one single
case of illness, allergy or death that could be
attributed to these plant products. Before
marketing they must pass a rigorous safety
battery, making them safer than products
produced by conventional breeding.
Manufacturing Risk,
Manufacturing Fear
History shows whenever a revolutionary
scientic concept or new technology is
adopted, there always is some skepticism.
Thats healthy, to a point. From the earth in
the center of the universe, to explorers sailing
off the edge of the earth, to coffee,
pasteurization, immunization and in vitro
fertilizationjust about every major scientic
advance has garnered a collection of
detractors and their dissent. Those in
opposition try to argue against carefully
assembled scientic evidence with opinions
founded only on closely held beliefs. However,
science tends to nd and reinforce hard
truths rather quickly. In all of these cases
(and hundreds others) beliefs inconsistent
with facts have a hard time competing with
hard science. So how to do you inuence
hearts and minds if you dont have evidence
on your side? You manufacture risk around
the technology in question. For some,
manufacturing perceived risk has become a
full-time job, and a protable one.
Animals in general dont like risk. Risk
avoidance is a deeply ingrained program that
has ensured the forward movement of genes,
as, in general, cautious tendencies made it
more likely for our ancestors to survive, get
interested in a mate and eventually
reproduce. To this day, humans maintain a
strong aversion to risk and those opposed to
GMO technology exploit this inherent
tendency. Scaring people with food-based
technology is an easy charge. Food has deep
cultural meanings: We have plenty of it. We
have plenty of choices. Then, the topic is
complex; we have little reverence for science
education, and the concepts sound
somewhere between sterile and alien.
Together it is a perfect storm to manipulate
fear and increase the perception of risk to
achieve a political or protable agenda.
This is the state of the discussion of
agricultural biotechnology. The technology is
not new; it has been in development for more
than 30 years and has been successfully
deployed for the better part of two decades.
The crops grown are among the best tested
in the world, and the genes and traits are
understood with remarkable resolution. The
technology has been rapidly adopted by
farmers, and undoubtedly had profound
impacts in saving time, labor, fuels and
environmental impacts (such as decreased
insecticide use). Again, problems like
herbicide-resistant weeds cant be ignored,
but the risk and benet equation is heavily
weighted to the benets.
There is no question that these
technologies have been safe and effective.
There is massive potential in how they may
help the farmer, the consumer, the needy and
the environment going forward. The central
barrier is the anti-scientic beliefs and
inuence of activists that manufacture fear to
inuence public perceptions.
Who do we want dictating public policy
around the science of food safety, food
security and food technology? Right now it is
a rabid activist fringe ranting unabated by
scientic opposition. The tide is changing. As
science is distorted in the name of political
agendas and prots, a traditionally quiet
cadre of public-sector scientists is waking up
to the reality that those who know nothing are
attempting to dictate a scientic conversation.
Farmers also realize a vocal minority is
attempting to dictate the seeds they can grow
and who they can buy them from. Fueled by
an Internet where the achievements and
reputations of scientists are viewed as equal
to rants of self-appointed experts, it is
important to let science, evidence and reason
prevail in affecting public opinion and shaping
public policy.
The citrus industry needs a solution. A tree
takes years to grow and be productive. A
gene from another plant may be a solution. It
could save an industry and maintain the
consumers pipeline of healthy juice and fresh
oranges. One of the barriers separating the
problem and a solution is the concern that
consumers will question the product, or even
worse, boycott and bury it in misinformation.
It is sad that public scientists produce a
solution that just might work, but its
development and deployment will be slowed
because of manufactured fear.
Citrus is just one case where a biotech
solution could have great dividends. We live
on a planet where a billion people wake up
with empty bellies, where one missing
nutrient is the difference between life and
death, and where crop plants need to be
more prolic with less environmental impact.
Major industries need fast solutions.
Transgenic technologies simply do what plant
breeding has always donemove a gene
from one background to another. It is
integrating genes in months or years rather
than decades. We need to be using every tool
to solve todays agricultural challenges and
precision breeding through biotechnology will
be part of that solution.
Kevin M. Folta is the associate professor and
chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at
University of Florida, Gainesville.
Reproduced with permission from SupplySide Boardroom Journal, March 2014. 2014 Virgo Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
For electronic usage only. Not to be printed in any format.