Novas Técnicas Genómicas: alegações duvidosas em matéria de produtividade, sustentabilidade e segurança 49 that development of a variety of agricultural measures will need “comparable attention and research efforts” to those currently applied to NGT plants.15 In contrast, conventional breeding has succeeded in developing crops with desirable traits such as drought tolerance and disease resistance. For example, the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project has developed 153 new varieties to improve yields in 13 countries. In field trials, these varieties match or exceed the yields from commercial seeds under good rainfall conditions, and yield up to 30% more under drought conditions.16 New cowpea varieties with high tolerance to heat and drought have been developed.17 And Syngenta has developed virus-resistant tomatoes using conventional breeding, sped up by MAS. Syngenta stated: “In the past, it might take up to 10 years to research and develop a virus-resistant variety. However, Syngenta researchers were able to condense the process to less than three years, the result of identifying sources of resistance to the virus within the company’s existing seed lines.”18 Moreover, when it comes to sustainability and resilience in the face of climate change, genetics are only part of the solution. It is not enough to focus on isolated traits – it is farming systems that give sustainability and resilience. The Rodale Institute’s 40-year Farming Systems Trial shows that organic systems can not only match conventional yields of major crops like maize and soybean, but give 30% higher yields during droughts, due to the superior organic matter content of the soil.19 Safety The main ethical concerns raised by NGT use in agriculture are the risks to health, the environment, and farming due to the inherent problems and limitations of these technologies. These issues cannot be avoided, whatever benefits are claimed for NGTs, and they will inevitably lead to socio-economic challenges for farmers and issues with trust in the food chain. 15 https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/11/2/212/htm 16 https://www.nature.com/articles/513292a 17 https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu/2013/04/10/new-cowpea-varieties-offer-promise-in-south-africa-other-parts-of-the-world/ 18 http://web.archive.org/web/20210428103042/; https://www.syngentagroup.com/en/our-stories/syngenta-expands-arsenal-in-the-global-battle-against-a-tomato-virus 19 https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/ 20 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22530509/; https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2023.1276226/full 21 https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-018-1458-5; See Figure 2, panels A and B. 22 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00525/full; https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2023.1276226/full 23 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04269-6 NGTs are unquestionably genetic modification technologies – artificial laboratory methods for altering the genetic makeup of a crop or animal. Just like older-style transgenic GM techniques, NGTs bear no resemblance to natural breeding (Figure 1). The claim of precision for NGTs is based on the fact that developers try to make a targeted alteration to an existing gene or targeted insertion of a foreign transgene at a predetermined region in the genome. However, what advocates fail to admit is that NGT processes, including CRISPR-mediated gene editing, when considered as a whole (plant tissue culture, plant cell genetic transformation, action of the gene editing tool) are prone to largescale, genome-wide unintended DNA damage (mutations). These unintended mutations include large deletions, insertions and rearrangements of DNA, affecting the function of many genes. GM transgenic and gene editing processes as a whole produce hundreds or thousands of unintended, random DNA mutations, far more in number than genetic variation that results from natural reproduction or random mutagenesis.20 A study on rice showed that the CRISPR/Cas gene editing process (plant tissue culture, plant cell genetic transformation) produced several times more sites of DNA mutation than multiple rounds of natural reproduction.21 However, it’s not just a matter of how many unintended mutations arise, but also where they occur and what they do. Genetic variation that results from natural reproduction is not random – crucial areas of the genome are protected against genetic change. In contrast, gene editing can produce mutations that would be difficult or impossible to produce by conventional breeding or random mutagenesis breeding.22 Changes that do take place in conventional breeding occur in a directed evolutionary manner, as the plant’s adaptation response to its environment.23 As farmers who save and plant their own seed know, crop performance improves over the years as the plant’s genetics adapt to the farm’s conditions.
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