Biotech News

Genetic engineering and integrated pest management prove useful in eradicating dangerous agricultural pest. Growers and industry leaders across the cotton belt, particularly those in California and Arizona, rightly hailed the announced eradication of an invasive pest that once threatened to wipe out the U.S. cotton industry. Eliminating the pink bollworm (PBW) from cotton fields is…

Tomatoes could benefit from a review to gene-editing policy, as it would be easier for British growers to produce good-tasting, low-cost tomatoes if there were better varieties available Last summer, the European Court of Justice ruled that ’genome edited’ crops should be categorised as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), meaning huge costs for licensing and trials. This…

Growers say the glyphosate-tolerant varieties have eased crop management and reduced crop’s environmental impact Alberta sugar beet growers embraced glyphosate-tolerant varieties when they first became available about 10 years ago. They’ve never looked back. The technology has revolutionized crop management and growers say it has also reduced the environmental impact of producing the labour-intensive crop.…

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has instructed the Ministries of Health, Agriculture and Trade, Industry and Cooperatives to explore the possibility of farming Bt cotton to revitalize the country’s cotton sub-sector. In his Heroes’ Day address to the nation, President Kenyatta directed the three ministries to work together and come up with a quick mechanism to…

The Government of Indonesia has approved the first genetically modified crop which will soon be commercialized in the country.  The biotech sugarcane event NXI-4T which contains betaine gene was developed by the state-owned sugar company, PT Perkebunan Nusantara XI (PTPN XI). The gene expressed osmoprotectant compound which was introduced using Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated plant transformation.  The…

Americans may soon be eating cotton for the first time — not just wearing it — as a new edible variety is poised to enter the market. On [October 16], the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the green light to commercialize a biotech version of the cotton plant whose seeds can be eaten, according to Texas A&M…

New genetically modified canola varieties could be commercially available in Australia by March next year, just shy of a decade since Roundup Ready was first grown in WA in 2010. TruFlex technology has been designed to eventually phase out Bayer’s Roundup Ready counterpart, which Bayer Crop Science regional business manager Hugh Trenorden said was because…

Harvest Brings Calyxt One Step Closer to Commercializing First High Fiber Wheat Product for Consumers MINNEAPOLIS & ST. PAUL, Minn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Calyxt, Inc. (CLXT) (NASDAQ:CLXT), a consumer-centric, food- and agriculture-focused company, today announced that the Company has completed the inaugural harvest of its high-fiber wheat product, the world’s first gene-edited, consumer-focused wheat product. The high-fiber…

Gene editing can speed up plant domestication, taming wild vines, bushes and grasses and turning them into new crops. Editing just two genes in ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa) produced plants that yielded more and bigger fruit, researchers report October 1 in Nature Plants. Those edits mimic changes that occurred in tomato plants during domestication, bringing…

Today, virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that have been genetically altered in some manner. If we’re going to feed the growing population without further destroying the environment, then we’re going to have to get comfortable with the idea of eating modified crops, Pamela Ronald, Director of the Institute for Food and Agricultural…