Background

Wheat

Wheat

Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...

 (Triticum spp.) is an important domesticated grass used worldwide for food, and its evolution has been influenced by human intervention since the dawn of agriculture.

Wheat is a natural hybrid derived from interspecies breeding. It is theorized that wheat's ancestors (Triticum monococcum, Aegilops speltoides, and Aegilops tauschii, all diploid grasses) hybridized naturally over millennia somewhere in West Asia, to create natural polyploid hybrids, the best known of which are common wheat and durum wheat.

Interspecies transfer of genes continued to occur in farmers fields during the shift from the Paleolithic diet

Paleolithic diet

The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet , also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the...

, to the diet adopted by humans following the Neolithic Revolution

Neolithic Revolution

The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution. It was the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in 6 separate locations worldwide circa...

, or first green revolution. Therefore, during the transition from a hunter-gatherer social structure to more agrarian societies, humans began to cultivate wheat and further transform it for their needs. Thus, the social and cultural roots of humans and the development of wheat have been bound closely together since before recorded history.

This process of wheat transformation has continued for millennia, resulting in various wheat species that are grown for specific purposes and climates. Experiments by Stephen Wilson in 1873
resulted in yet another hybridization, the cross-pollination of rye and wheat to create triticale

Triticale

Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century. The grain was originally bred in Scotland and Sweden. Commercially available triticale is almost always a second generation hybrid, i.e., a cross between two kinds of primary triticales...

. Further transformations of wheat using cytogenic hybridization techniques enabled Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug

Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution". Borlaug was one of only six people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal...

, father of the Second Green Revolution

Green Revolution

Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production around the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s....

, to develop wheat species (the semidwarf varieties) that would grow in harsh environments.

When recombinant DNA techniques were developed in the 1980s, work began on creating the first transgenic wheat, coincident with the third Green Revolution. Of the three most important cereals in the world (corn, rice and wheat), wheat was the last to be transformed by transgenic, biolistic methods in 1992, and by Agrobacterium

Agrobacterium

Agrobacterium is a genus of Gram-negative bacteria established by H. J. Conn that uses horizontal gene transfer to cause tumors in plants. Agrobacterium tumefaciens is the most commonly studied species in this genus...

 methods in 1997, but unlike corn and rice, it's widespread use in the human diet has found slow acceptance due to cultural resistance

Arguments for adoption of transgenic wheat

Proponents for the adoption of transgenic wheat feel that it is necessary to feed the growing numbers of hungry humans on the planet. Only transgenic methods, they say, can ensure that we can develop strains of wheat fast enough to have adequate yields to sustain the world's population.

The genes responsible for wheat's senescence and annualism may be reversible using transgenic means, resulting in a wheat with adventitious roots, good production of seed, and perennial habits.

In addition to increased yields, further transgenic experiments are underway to change wheat such that it provides better nutrition. Attempts to increase wheat's nutritional value have concentrated on the addition of amino acids, vitamins, minerals and essential oils. Increasing the amylose content to create a wheat with a low glycemic index starch, has also been a goal of transgenic wheat production.

Some transgenic wheat experiments have sought to directly boost the human immune system using human genes.

To appeal to farmers, transgenic techniques have attempted to make wheat insect resistant, more disease resistant, to need less nitrogen to grow, and to require less pesticide and herbicide. As the world's climate is expected to get hotter, and water more scarce, wheat strains are being developed that will be drought resistant, and heat tolerant. The first transgenic wheat licensed for sale into the human food-chain (so far only in two countries worldwide, Argentina and the United States) is MON 71800, and it provides resistance to Monsanto's glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup by using a CP4/maize EPSPS gene. Studies conducted by Monsanto

Monsanto

The Monsanto Company is a US-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed in the "Roundup" brand of herbicides, and in other brands...

 have shown that its nutritional components are equivalent to nontransgenic commercially available wheat, and animal studies that have used MON 71800 for feed have confirmed this. Environmental Risk assessments have been conducted by Monsanto, and government regulatory agencies have approved its use; however, not all farmers are yet convinced. So many farmers were worried about the potential loss of markets in Europe and Asia due to public refusal of the end-product, Monsanto decided to no longer offer Roundup-Ready Wheat commercially until transgenic wheat is more widely accepted. Currently no transgenic wheat is used commercially in the United States. Monsanto is now looking toward introducing transgenic wheat into the world's food supply starting with India.

To appeal to consumers, transgenic techniques have attempted to increase the gluten content for use in baked goods, and to reduce wheat's allergenic effect among those suffering from celiac disease or gluten sensitivity

Gluten sensitivity

Gluten sensitivity belongs to a spectrum of disorders in which gluten has an adverse effect on the body. It can be defined as a non-allergic and non-autoimmune condition in which the consumption of gluten can lead to symptoms similar to those observed in coeliac disease or wheat allergy .Gluten...

. Transgenic methods have also been used to promote wheat's purported health benefits by enhancing wheat's lignans which may have anti-cancer properties.

To appeal to environmentalists, transgenic techniques have been touted as having more precision in the way genes are selected, as opposed to mutagenic techniques using radiation or chemicals (currently used widely, and for some reason more culturally acceptable than transgenic processes), which may pass uncontrolled and unwanted genetic changes to progeny.

Arguments against adoption of transgenic wheat

Those who argue against the adoption of transgenic wheat in human diet say that the reason the world has so many people is due to the second green revolution, where unsustainable agricultural practices have left us with more mouths to feed than the planet can safely and ecologically sustain. Even if wheat is successful in feeding the current population using transgenic methods, the world will undergo another population explosion which will require even more drastic agricultural interventions, and with the coming crisis in oil shortages, there will not be enough fuel to make fertilizers, pesticides, or to drive the tractors, combines, transports, factories and distribution centres that modern agricultural methods have required.

Furthermore, to feed people transgenic wheat would introduce DNA changes in humans that no one will be able to predict. To introduce further changes much faster would not allow humans time to evolve side-by-side with the plants.

For example, the purveyors of the Paleolithic diet point out that humans have not even evolved enough to take full advantage of a diet based on wheat, after some 6000 years of agriculture. There may be evidence to suggest that humans have not even yet evolved to be able to handle the amount of wheat already present in the average diet: gluten intolerance and celiac disease show that some segment of the population are unable to tolerate a wheat-based diet. And some controversial studies even link autism, attention deficit disorder, and other modern ailments to human inability to properly metabolize wheat products. The archeological record shows that the adoption of an agrarian diet coincided with a decline in healthy bones and tissues.

The large scale cultivation of wheat fields creates a monoculture of plant life which destroys ecosystems and habitat, and reduces biodiversity. An example of how biodiversity may outpace the need for transgenic techniques occurred when a need was felt for a wheat that would be resistant to aluminum toxicity in the soil. Several wheat subspecies and landraces were found to already have the gene.

There are also fears that disease resistant plants could create super-weeds, unable to be controlled by any means, or that transgenic plants with antibiotic resistance might transfer their DNA to microbes in the wild and thus create super-bugs.

The creation of wheat strains that fix their own nitrogen from the air, like legumes, has so far concentrated on adding legume-like abilities to interact with soil-based micro-organisms that do the nitrogen-fixing. To this end, transgenic wheat that fixes nitrogen would require a transgenic soil-based micro-organism that works symbiotically with wheat. The fears are that once such a micro-organism is in the soil, it cannot be contained or controlled.

The track-record of other transgenic crops that have promised less pesticide use has not been good, leading many to assume that the claims for less pesticide use for wheat are unfounded. Since the companies that provide the pesticides are the ones creating the transgenic crops, a conflict of interest has been observed.

Farmers are also concerned that many countries have placed a moratorium on the purchase of transgenic wheat, and so they may lose their market share if transgenic wheat is found in the product that they wish to sell. Since wheat is pollinated by the wind, opponents to transgenic wheat feel that there will be no way to stop transgenic wheat from contaminating conventional or organic crops, once it has been introduced into the environment.

For example, in 1999 Scientists in Thailand claimed they discovered transgenic wheat in a grain shipment from the Pacific Northwest of the United States, even though transgenic wheat had never been approved for sale and was only ever grown in test plots. No one could explain how the transgenic wheat got into the food supply.

When farmers buy seed to grow transgenic crops, they customarily will sign a licensing fee, agreeing that they do not own the seed, and they cannot save seed from their crop to plant in successive years, nor can they reverse engineer the plant, or infringe in any way on the intellectual property of the patent owners of the transgenic plant.

Conclusion

There is evidence that the battle lines between those who want transgenic wheat, and those who do not, are heating up. Proponents are leveling an anti-science bias against those who would oppose transgenic wheat; and some opponents have destroyed test plots of transgenic wheat plants..

The incentive to develop transgenic wheat is the profit that will come from patenting of plants and the monopolizing of seed to cover the expense of engineering transgenic plants. However, wheat breeding in the latter years of the Second Green Revolution benefited from "widespread sharing of genetically improved materials." It remains to be seen whether transgenic wheat will be accepted into the marketplace and diet of the world's people, and whether a proprietary hold on the DNA of one of the world's staple grain foods will save the starving world of the future.