Chapter Five

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Discussion
 Chapter Five: Discussion

Discussion
There are about 777 million people in developing countries .Over half of these people
depend primarily on agriculture for their living. Furthmore because of the large
population they are projected to increase their demand for cereal grains by about 80%
between 1999 & 2020. According to Rosegrant et al. (1997) that over the next two
decades global demand for cereals could rise by 40%. By 2020, it is expected that
67% of the world ceral consumption will occur in the developing countries. And the
problem is that most of them survive on less than US $1 a day. To meet the need of
this vast population, new varieties of crops introduced in Asia between the 1960s and
the 1980s increased crop yields significantly, allowing agriculture to provide food and
work for a growing population, and reduce poverty. However, the improvements in
crop yields achieved then have now slowed. Additionally, benefits of the Green
Revolution failed to reach their. All these things keeping in mind it can say that an
effective technology need to be introduce there that can meet their demand for
different crops effectively as well as which would be economic for them.

Considering this entire requirement the technology that can meet their need is GM
(genetic modification) technology. GM technology can meet their need sufficiently in
a economic way. With the help of this technology it is possible to introduce different
traits in a crop species which they don’t contain before. Such as herbicide resistance,
stress tolerance, disease resistance, improved nutritional value, high yielding capacity.
And for introducing all these traits what you need is a cloning vector, because the
process of genetic modification in different crop species is mostly carried out by the
help of a vector that are able to introduce the gene of interest in a crop. Different
types of vector can be used for this purpose, e.g. plasmid, BAC, YAC, bacteriophage,
transposon etc.

Different types of plasmid are used to date they can be E.coli plasmid such as
pBR322or Agrobacterium Ti plasmid .Although both the plasmid are mostly used
but due to some lacking Agrobacterium Ti plasmid are preferable. They are called

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nature’s smallest engineer. In Agrobacterium tumefaciens mediated gene transfer the

desired gene of interest is inserted between the T-DNA borders of Ti plasmid of
Agrobacterium tumefaciens and causes the transformation in plant by entering the
intercellular region.

Scientist continues to search for different transforming vector as with the help of
Agrobacterium small amount of DNA transfer was possible. As a result they find out
about the capacity of gene transfer of yeast plasmid, virus, cosmids, transposon
etc.The discovery of BAC and YAC solve the problem of transferring larger DNA
sequence to plant. This speeded up the technique of transformation of plant and
different crop species greatly. They (cloning vector) made possible to introduce many
beneficial characters to different plant and crop species.

After the discovery of YAC the era of megabases cloning started. And was used for
modification of different crop species, but it has some problem too, that is the
formation of chimeras.

Then in the early 1990s discovery of BAC occur that reduces the risk of chimera as
well as transfer of large DNA segment. But beside these advantage they also has
disadvantage that the efficiency of cloning a foreign gene. They are not so efficient in
transferring the desired gene. That’s why for increasing the rate of transfer researcher
use the bacteriophage as cloning vector. It solves the problem of failure of expression
of eukaryotic genes which occur due to inability to recognize eukaryotic promoters
and the absence of RNA-processing machinery in E. coli. Scientist partially
overcomes these problems by the use of cDNA cloning in the expression vectors such
as λgtll.

Other vectors include cosmids (plasmids that contain COS site) and transposon (the
jumping gene) .with the help of cosmid DNA of about 45kb can be inserted but the
problem is DNA rearrangement can occur and somewhat unstable. On the other hand
transposons are very new concept for using as vector. For using transposon as vector

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one need another vector e.g. plasmid for carrying the transposon. So, transposons are
not direct vector for transferring any DNA sequence; they are the indirect vector for
transfer of DNA sequences.

Beside these merits of cloning vector there are demerits too; for using these cloning
vector different side effects appear after transformation, many time the inserted gene
is not properly transferred to the plant, and the strain can go back to its natural state,
which causes harmful effect to plant. Such as if the phage used for transformation
return to its native state it can causes different disease of the plant ; the untransformed
Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium can causes gall formation to plant.

Another problem that arises is the concentration of the world economy to certain
people, because as for development of a GM crop took lots of money and most of the
developing countries cannot afford it, they will not be able to utilize the advantage of
genetic engineering. On the other hand because the developed countries will have the
patent right, the developing countries will have to depend on the developed countries
for using them.

All these concern arise the question that weather or not we should adopt the GM crop.
But it is often claimed that one reason for having GM crops is that they will help to
feed the world’s growing population in this century by increasing yields and fighting
crop
diseases. However, many people in the world are suffering from malnutrition and
hunger
because they cannot afford to buy food, not because it is unavailable. Complex social,
political and economic forces affect how people have access to land, money and
resources. It is these forces, much more than the level of food production which
determine who gets to eat, and who does not.

It is not just a simple case of there being more people, so more food should be grown.

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There is more than enough food to feed everyone very well at the moment, yet
hundreds of millions of people go hungry and nearly two billion are malnourished.
For example, in 1998 it is estimated that 36 million people, including 14 million
children, were hungry or on the brink of hunger in the USA29, one of the richest
countries in the world.

Most GM crop produced by vector technology being grown at the moment is destined
for markets in rich countries. Soya and maize are used mainly for animal feed and for
adding to processed food in rich countries. Such products will not help to feed the
poor and hungry of the world. The majority of GM crops being grown around the
world at the moment are herbicide tolerant. These crops are designed for use in
intensive farming systems, with single crops in large fields requiring heavy use of
chemical inputs. Many farmers in developing countries are small scale, growing
many different crops and they often cannot afford the chemicals needed.

Several countries that have faced serious food shortages have raised concerns about
the
use of GM crops in food aid. These concerns have focused on the health and
environmental effects of introducing GM crops and foods during emergency
situations, often in countries lacking biosafety regulations.

So, from the above we see lots of problems are associated with the use of genetically
modified crops.But as the technology moving very fast, with the blessings of
advanced techniques of modern biotechnology or recombinant DNA technology it is
possible to overcome all these problems.

Any technology have disadvantage beside its advantages. Researchers always try to
find out the lackings of a technology and try to solve the problem. We hope the
problems that are arising during manipulation of different cloning vector for
production of GM crops will be solved soon for the welfare of human being.

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