*This page was produced as part of an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College*

GM Crops: A Farmer's Dream?

Home

Conferring Resistance

Disease

Pest/Herbicide

Stress

Ramifications

Increased Profit Margin

Land Use

Monoculture

Poor Farmers vs.  Rich Farmers

Cultural Backlash

Conclusions

Works Cited

 

Abiotic Stress Resistance

Abiotic or environmental stresses, including drought, cold, salinity, and metals in the soil, cause tremendous crop losses worldwide, even in developed countries.  For farmers whose crop yields are threatened by these environmental factors, the development of stress-tolerant crops has significant implications:

  • Of the world's 130 million hectares of land cultivated by rice farmers,

  • 30% contain enough salt to stunt rice yields or prevent cultivation altogether

  • 20% are periodically subject to drought conditions

  • 10% occasionally experience temperatures too low (15°C or below) for healthy plant development (Lane, 2002).

  • Strongly acidic soils, which often contain high levels of aluminum, are common in the humid tropics.  There has been little agricultural development in the Brazilian cerrado, a savanna region of approximately 200 million hectares, because its highly leached soils contain large amounts of aluminum compounds (Plucknett and Smith, 1982).

  • The Canadian prairies, which are among the coldest agricultural regions in the world, contain 85% of Canada's arable land.  Canadian farmers lose millions of dollars each year in production and market quality due to frost damage (Functional Genomics, 2004).

A Nigerian rice farmer cuts rice on his land.  Without extensive irrigation, his crops would produce one-tenth of their current output.  Photo by Robert Grossman.  *Permission pending from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD, 2004)*

Although no stress-tolerant crop varieties have yet been released commercially,  research is ongoing to confer tolerance of several abiotic stresses to crop plants.  Learn more about researchers' methods of conferring resistance to the following abiotic stresses:

Metals in the Soil

Drought and Salinity

Cold


Questions or comments can be directed to  saparker@davidson.edu

GMO Seminar Homepage

Biology Department Homepage

Page maintained by Matt Talbert, Nicole Hesson, and Sarah Parker

Last modified April 2004