Science Folio

Name : Cromwell A. Jubili

Class : 3 Amanah

Topic : Genetically Engineered Soya Bean Plants

Science Teacher: Jennifer Asing

 CONTENTS

Contents
NO Topic

How genetically engineered soya bean plants better than natural soya bean
1 plants?

What will happen to natural soya bean plants which are grown in field close to
2 where
the genetically modified are growing?

What are the effects of cross pollination between natural soya bean plants and
3 the
genetically modified plants

4 What other plants are also genetically modified?

5 Is genetically modified food safe to be consumed? Why?

6 Referens
How genetically engineered soya bean
plants better than natural soya bean
plants

Advantages of engineered soya bean plants:

The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next
50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a
major challenge in the years to come. GM foods promise to meet this need in a number of
ways:

- GM soybeans are being used in an increasing number of products

- Herbicide tolerance For some crops, it is not cost-effective to remove weeds by

physical means such as tilling, so farmers will often spray large quantities of different
herbicides (weed-killer) to destroy weeds, a time-consuming and expensive process, that
requires care so that the herbicide doesn't harm the crop plant or the environment. Crop
plants genetically-engineered to be resistant to one very powerful herbicide could help
prevent environmental damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed. For
example, Monsanto has created a strain of soybeans genetically modified to be not
affected by their herbicide product Roundup . A farmer grows these soybeans which then
only require one application of weed-killer instead of multiple applications, reducing
production cost and limiting the dangers of agricultural waste run-off7.

1
What will happen to natural soya bean plants
which are grown in field close to where
the genetically modified plants are growing?

- The natural soya bean plants will be cross pollinated to the other plants which are
genetically modified plants are growing.

2
What are the effects of cross pollination
between natural soya bean plants and the
Genetically Modified Plants?

The plants will have a gene transfer to non-target species another concern is that crop
plants engineered for herbicide tolerance and weeds will cross-breed, resulting in the
transfer of the herbicide resistance genes from the crops into the weeds. These
"superweeds" would then be herbicide tolerant as well. Other introduced genes may cross
over into non-modified crops planted next to GM crops.

3
What other plants are also genetically
modified?

The most common modified foods are derived from plants is :

Soybean : The soybean (U.S.) or soya bean (UK) (Glycine max) is a species of legume
native to East Asia. It is an annual plant that has been used in China for 5,000 years as a
food and a component of drugs. Soy contains significant amounts of all the essential
amino acids for humans, and so is a good source of protein. Soybeans are the primary
ingredient in many processed foods, including dairy product substitutes.

Corn : Maize known as corn in some countries, is a cereal grain domesticated in

Mesoamerica and subsequently spread throughout the American continents. After
European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th century, maize spread
to the rest of the world. Maize is the most widely grown crop in the Americas (332
million tonnes annually in the United States alone). Hybrid maize, due to its high grain
yield as a result of heterosis ("hybrid vigor"), is preferred by farmers over conventional
varieties. While some maize varieties grow up to 7 metres (23 ft) tall, most commercially
grown maize has been bred for a standardized height of 2.5 metres (8 ft). Sweet corn is
usually shorter than field-corn varieties.

4
Canola : Canola is one of two cultivars of rapeseed or Brassica napus L. and B.
campestris L. Their seeds are used to produce edible oil that is fit for human consumption
because it has lower levels of erucic acid than traditional rapeseed oils and to produce
livestock feed because it has reduced levels of the toxin glucosin. Canola was originally
naturally bred from rapeseed in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson in
the early 1970s, but it has a very different nutritional profile in addition to much less
erucic acid. The name "canola" was derived from "Canadian oil, low acid" in 1978. A
product known as LEAR (for low erucic acid rapeseed) derived from cross-breeding of
multiple lines of Brassica juncea is also referred to as canola oil and is considered safe for
consumption.

Cottonseed oil : Cottonseed oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the seeds of the cotton
plant after the cotton has been removed. It must be refined to remove gossypol, a
naturally occurring toxin that protects the cotton plant from insect damage

5
Is genetically modified food safe to be
consumed?why?
Genetically modified food is good to have in our in our society because it has the
potential to solve many of the world's hunger and malnutrition problems, and to help
protect and preserve the environment by increasing yield and reducing reliance upon
chemical pesticides and herbicides. But this is the disadvantage of it :

CORN - Two research studies have independently shown evidence of allergenic reactions
to genetically-modified Bt corn,
- Farm workers exposed to genetically-modified Bt sprays exhibited extensive
allergic reactions.

POTATOES - A study showed genetically-modified potatoes expressing cod genes were

allergenic.

PEAS - A decade-long study of GM peas was abandoned when it was discovered that they
caused allergic lung damage in mice.

SOY - In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory discovered that reactions to soy
had skyrocketed by 50% over the year before, which corresponded with the introduction of
genetically-modified soy from the US. It was the first time in 17 years that soy was tested
in the lab among the top ten allergenic foods.

So, for this time genetically modified food is still not safe to be consumed until the the
time when technology create a perfect genetically modified food that is free from
negative effect to human, animal and nature.
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Referens

1. http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean
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