Breeding agricultural products using transgenic gene editing
Researchers inspect transgenic cassava in a green house at NaCRRI Namulonge
One of the Sustainable Development Goals (STG’s) is for countries to ensure there is food security and improved nutrition which should be realised through improved and sustainable methods of agricultural practices.
One of the predictions is for countries which are still food insecure to end hunger by the year 2030 and ensure access to all the people including the poor and vulnerable like infants to consume nutritious food.
Such countries, Uganda inclusive, are expected to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030 especially among infants.
These countries are expected to double agricultural produce and increase income of farmers practicing small holder agriculture especially pastoralists and farmers including those engaged in fish farming among others.
Other concerns that are expected to be accomplished by 2020 include maintaining genetic diversity of seed, vegetative crops like cassava, sweet potato for the case of Uganda, domesticated animals like cattle, goats, pigs, sheep and their related wild species for farmers to benefit including plant banks.
These projected SDG plan is to solve issues arising from unprecedented population growth, increasing conflict and displacement, natural calamities and emergence of major epidemics which are some of the factors that will compound complexities of global food security over the coming years.
According to the recent reports from World Food Programme, some 795 million people in the world don’t have enough food to lead a healthy active life.
This can get worse with the next global food crisis, predicted to occur within four years a prediction given by science experts in the world.
For scientists across the globe in agricultural value chain to counteract the upcoming challenges likely to be faced by factors which may lead to food insecurity like climate change challenges among others, it is imperative to try novel and enterprising solutions across the agricultural food chain, including gene modification of crops which is already being applied by scientists in many countries including Uganda.
While it is the contention of agricultural scientists across the globe that genetically modified (GM) crops could be our best hope for feeding an increasingly hungry planet, there is need to develop agricultural products within a regulatory framework that takes potential risks into account and protects farmers, consumers and the environment.
In Uganda and other countries in Easter Africa like Kenya, scientists are already developing transgenic crop varieties using modern biotechnology mechanism.
In some countries in Africa like South Africa, Sudan and Burkina Faso, commercialization of transgenic crops such as BT cotton and cow pea is already going on and countries like Ghana and Nigeria are conducting trails in a number of crop varieties including cow pea against Maruca vitrata pest.
In Uganda trials are being conducted in various crops namely the East Africa highland banana variety against banana bacterial wilt, nematodes, black sigatoka, banana rich in vitamin A, cassava against cassava brown streak virus, cassava mosaic virus, rice growing in less nutrient soil, maize tolerant to drought and maize stem borer, BT cotton and Irish potato resistant to blight.
Scientists in Uganda under their umbrella body National Agricultural Research Organisation (Naro) have already concluded trials of banana against black sigatoka, Vitamin A sweet banana and banana bacterial wilt and results show maximum tolerance against the various diseases mentioned.
However much as agricultural scientists in the globe have been developing crop, animal and poultry varieties among others using modern biotechnology to come up with GMO products, a number of scientists both in the agricultural and medical sector in the developed world are now moving towards developing agricultural and medical products using gene editing technology.
Dr. Geoffrey Arinaitwe, a principal research officer at the National Agricultural Research Laboratories (NARL) in Kawanda while explaining how Agricultural scientists are using this technology said, there are a number of technologies now coming up a case in point is nano technology which is defined as the application of functional systems at the molecular level and now gene editing.
How gene editing is a different technology from genetic modification is that the production of genetically modified organisms involves inserting desired foreign genes from a similar plant into the genome of a plant of interest or animal but gene editing modifies plant, as well as animal and human, genomes without the introduction of foreign genetic materials.
“I think Agricultural scientists in a way are avoiding complexities surrounding Biosafety laws regarding GMO’s because many people opposing it usually claim genes are obtained from unwanted material and transferred to crops which is not the case," Dr Arinaitwe says.
To him, many scientists in the developed world are already using this technology especially in the medical sector but Ugandan scientists in agricultural sector should think of joining the rest of the world in using the technology because as the world population keeps growing, there need to increase production of food to avoid food insecurity.
The Chief Executive Office of food agriculture nature resources policy analyst from Zimbambwe Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda in explaining how gene editing works states that Gene editing uses biological catalysts called transcription activator like effector nucleases a process of restricting enzymes using artificial means called TALENS that can be engineered to bind to any DNA sequence.
Scientists can introduce these enzymes into living cells where they cut out unwanted pieces of DNA while editing the genome.
To him genome editing is not a new idea because scientists have used it to create gene edits in human stem cells as well as in worms, fish, mice and cattle with varying degrees of success.
In the laboratory, TALENs have also been used to successfully correct the genetic error underlying diseases such as sickle cell anaemia.
In crop science, gene editing has been used to develop potato with sugar content as well as fat free soy bean containing high level of omega 3 (fatty acid) in USA.
Another plant developed using gene editing which has been commercialized in the USA for human consumption is the edited version of Canola, a plant used for processing oil.
According to Dr Lindiwe, the new canola plant is designed to grow well even when farmers apply particular herbicides that are used to control glyphosate resistant weeds.
Researchers at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines have developed rice variety where the crop can extract energy from sunlight far more efficiently than before.
But in the developing world including Uganda the many focus of agricultural scientists is in gene modification in developing crops rich in various nutrient like protein, vitamin A, high yielding , drought and pest resistant crop varieties much needed by small scale farmers globally.
One can imagine these kind of improvements being of particular interest to farmers in Africa and the rest of the developing world, who rely on staple crops including corn, rice, potatoes, cassava and soy bean.
However while using the genetic modification technology scientists are aware that it is not a perfect tool therefore the need to consider safety issues.
In gene editing Dr Lindiwe contends that significant genetic errors have been made by the commonly applied techniques of genome editing, including TALENs, in the past.
In laboratory models, off target events that produce unwanted mutations, sometimes with fatal results, have been described in plants, fish and human cells therefore the need for scientists to be careful and thorough when conducting research.
Uganda’s population is currently estimated to be 34.5 million according to the census conducted last year in September.
According to the Uganda Nutrition Action Plan for the year 2011 – 2016 malnutrition accounts for about 35% deaths among children under 5 years old around the world and it is major cause of morbidly for all ages.
In addition, iron deficiency is the leading cause of maternal mortality, accounting for 20 percent of the estimated 536,000 deaths worldwide.
According to the Uganda Demographic and Household Survey 2011, 2.3 million children in Uganda under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished with the number of women being 12% meaning production of nutritious agricultural products is needed using the available technology
