30th anniversary of GM Crops: developing in the controversy(Part 3)

GM corn was popular variety

The varieties show that the newly approved GM crops in 2013 cover 6 categories of crops – corn, soy, cotton, rapeseed, eggplant and sugarcane. GM corn holds the largest approved numbers and also the largest approved varieties. There are 61 approved GM corn crops among the 108 approved crops accounting for 56.5% of the total approved GM crops, which cover 47 GM corn varieties accounting for 62.7% of the total approved varieties; coming up next is the GM soy with 26 approved crops which cover 13 varieties accounting respectively for 24.1% and 17.3% of the total approvals; GM cotton holds 10 approvals which cover 8 varieties accounting respectively for 9.3% and 10.7% of the total approvals; GM rapeseed holds 9 approvals which cover 5 varieties accounting respectively for 8.3% and 6.7% of the total approvals; GM eggplant and sugarcane hold 1 approval each.

Asia approved more GM crops

The territory of approved GM crops in 2013 involves 20 countries or regions. The number of approval of GM crops in Japan is the largest, totaling to 17 approved crops, covering corn, soy, cotton and rapeseed, which are mainly for food and forage use while part of them for plantation. There are 15 approvals respectively in Thailand and Korea, both ranking No.2. Korea’s approved crops mainly cover corn and cotton mostly for food use while Thailand’s approved crops are mainly corn and soy for food use. There are 13 approvals in EU, ranking No.3, where the approved crops are mainly corn and rapeseed both for food use. In US there are 8 approvals covering corn, rapeseed, soy and cotton mostly for plantation use, as well as partly for food and forage use. China has appeared to be always a little prudent and conservative with respect to GM crops, where 5 crops were approved covering corn and soy only for food and forage use. It is worthy of note that Brazil, as the world second largest GM crop planting country, approved only 1 GM crop – the Herculex XTRA™ for food, forage and plantation use, as jointly developed by Dow AgroSciences and DuPont. In addition to Japan, US and Brazil as mentioned above, other countries that have approved GM crops include Canada with 6 approvals, Argentina with 3 approvals, Paraguay with 3 approvals, Bangladesh and Indonesia with 1 approval each.

Multinationals were major players

In 2013, 13 companies obtained GM crop approvals where agrochemical multinationals obtained the majority of approvals. As shown, there were 9 multinationals and 4 non-multinationals having obtained approvals, of which approvals to the 9 multinationals are divided to 2 sorts: GM crops developed by 6 multinationals independently; GM crops developed by 3 consortiums made up by multinationals and non-multinationals; the biological giant Monsanto still remained to be the biggest winner with 23 GM crop varieties being approved in various countries, totaling to 35 approvals.

Syngenta obtained 12 approved GM crop varieties totaling to 26 approvals; Bayer CropScience obtained 9 approved GM crop varieties totaling to 12 approvals; Dow AgroSciences obtained 8 approved GM crop varieties totaling to 15 approvals; DuPont obtained 4 approved GM crop varieties totaling to 7 approvals; Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences jointly obtained 10 approved GM crop varieties. Although multinationals are overwhelmingly dominant in development and promotion of GM crops, yet being unable to rule the whole industry, as biological or seed companies also obtained approved GM crop varieties in certain countries, such as Genective, Maharashtra Hybrid Seed, PT Perkebunan Nusantara XI (Persero) and Stine Seed Farm.

More GMOs with stacked traits developed

Concerning the trait of GM crops, in 2013 there were 20 approved GM crop varieties with singular trait and 55 approved GM crop varieties with stacked traits; as regards to the total number of approvals, there were 33 approvals of GM crops with singular trait and 75 approvals of GM crops with stacked traits. It can be seen that GM crops with 2 or above 2 traits have developed quite rapidly, which will be the future trend of development of GM crops. If looking at the type of the trait, the trait of herbicide tolerance and insect resistance are the 2 main traits of the approved GM crops in 2013, together with some other newly emerging traits, such as male sterility, antibiotic resistance, mannose metabolis, etc. The trait of herbicide tolerance mainly stays with the prime herbicides like glyphosate, glufosinate, 2,4-D and dicamba, but also there are several emerging traits, like sulfonylurea herbicide tolerance and isoxaflutole herbicide tolerance. Among the several GM crops with drought stress tolerance approved in 2013, NXI-1T of Persero is the only one approved in Indonesia for plantation.