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Genetically Engineered Trees

 

Since 1999 GENET collects and distributes information on various topics in the field of genetic engineering in agriculture, food production and health. With this "Special Topic: GE Trees" GENET aims at providing an overview about the worldwide debate on genetically engineered trees, based on our archives.

 

Databank Query 1: "trees" as key word in the GENET-news text

 

You will find a selection of publications in the section "Research & Reports". To get more information about the different stakeholders in the debate, please follow the internet links to selected actors in the civil society and industry sectors. Finally, the page "GE Trees and the CBD" introduces you into the international debate about a moratorium on GE trees that is ongoing at the Convention for Biological Biodiversity.

GENET-news articles

2004-11-18 |

Rainbow papaya saved industry

Rainbow papaya is the reason we’re still in business. Without it, we wouldn’t have trees to grow or fruit to sell. Instead of 350 to 400 papaya farmers in the state, there might be 50. When ringspot virus reached Puna in 1992, 95 percent of the state’s fresh papayas grew there. Whole fields were infected, and growers had to choose between cutting all their trees or letting them stand and hoping for some harvestable fruit. With sick trees left standing, the virus spread quickly.

2004-11-18 |

How UH helped save Hawai’i’s papayas

For generations, the papaya ringspot virus, or PRSV, threatened the livelihood of Hawai’i’s papaya farmers. It was discovered on O’ahu in the 1940s and devastated papaya production. By the mid-1980s, more than 90 percent of the state’s papayas were grown in the Big Island’s Puna district. The removal of infected trees in neighboring areas kept Puna virus-free for decades, but time was not on the growers« side. Knowing that Puna’s luck wouldn’t last forever, researchers from UH- Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, Cornell University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private industry began work to develop a papaya genetically engineered to resist the virus.

2004-11-18 |

Long-term testing is critical in GMO »foods«

It’s outrageous that organic growers have been told to bag each flower on every tree to prevent GMO papaya contamination. UH must supply GMO testing for papaya seeds and trees. Growers deserve to know what they are eating and selling. UH released this invasive species into our environment. UH must take responsibility to clean it up.

2004-11-11 |

Call for global ban on GM trees

China appears to be the first country on Earth which has taken genetically modified trees into commercial use. According to reports there are now more than a million insect resistant GM poplars in plantations in Southern China. There is still a great lack of information as to the varieties in question but activists are worried. »If those GM poplars can cross pollinate with the natural populations the contamination cannot be avoided. In that case China has obviously made LMO (living modified organism) invasion to other countries and by that it will break the national sovereignty of those countries and also international laws like the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, says Mikko Vartiainen, a lawyer and activist in People’s Biosafety Association in Finland.

2004-10-08 |

Can GE papayas be good neighbors on Hawai’i (USA)?

Then, last spring, some of Mr. Lahti’s fruit tested positive for genetically modified seeds. »’I was really surprised,’« Mr. Lahti said. »’I didn’t really know what was happening.”
He cut down all 170 of his trees and is now replanting, without any guarantee that the same problem - pollen from modified trees on other farms drifting on the wind to pollinate his trees - won’t happen again. From papayas in Hawaii, to corn in Mexico and canola in Canada, the spread of pollen or seeds from genetically engineered plants is evolving from an abstract scientific worry into a significant practical problem.

2004-09-20 |

Nobody knows where China’s GE trees are growing

China has planted more than a million genetically modified trees in a bid to halt the spread of deserts and prevent flash floods. But a bureaucratic loophole means that no one knows for sure where all the trees have been planted, or what effect they will have on native forests. In the past five years, 8000 square kilometres of farmland in China has been converted to plantations. State foresters have focused on the headwaters of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers and Xinjiang province in the arid north-west, where the first field tests for GM trees were carried out in the late 1990s.

2004-09-16 |

Hawai'i critics say engineered papayas are a threat

Pollen from genetically engineered papayas has contaminated at least some ordinary papaya plants in Hawaii, say advocates for controls on genetically modified organisms. Evidence of such »genetic drift« with papaya was recently confirmed with testing of Hawaii papaya samples at a mainland lab, representatives of Hawaii Genetic Engineering Action Network and GMO-Free Hawaii said Thursday. Proponents of the genetically engineered Rainbow and SunUp papayas agreed that pollen can spread to nonengineered trees, but said they would need to know more about testing methodologies before agreeing there is a problem.

2004-09-16 |

GE contamination in papaya seeds confirmed by Thai government

An agricultural research station yesterday destroyed 1,000 suspected genetically modified (GM) papaya trees in Muang district. »Ten years of research aimed at improving disease resistance in papayas was destroyed, along with the experimental crops,« said research station chief Wilai Prasartsri. Wilai said the research setback was unjustified and was essnetially based on an unfounded fear of GM crops.

2004-09-10 |

GE trees in China: Genetically modified madness

Two years ago, China’s State Forestry Administration approved genetically modified (GM) poplar trees for commercial planting. Well over one million insect resistant GM poplars have now been planted in China. Also two years ago, China launched the world’s largest tree planting project. By 2012 the government aims to have covered an area of 44 million hectares with trees.

2004-08-12 |

Oji Paper grafts natural eucalyptus on GE eucalyptus roots

Oji Paper Co. has successfully grafted natural eucalyptus onto genetically modified eucalyptus to create trees that grow well in acidic soils without worry that genetically altered seeds will spread in the environment. The graft has the root system of a eucalyptus tree genetically modified to absorb nutrients in acidic soils, where eucalyptus normally does not thrive. The rest of the graft from the trunk up is derived from a natural eucalyptus tree.

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GE Trees: NGOs and Social Movements

 people's Forest Forum

The Global Ban on GM Trees Campaign was released by three Finnish non-governemental organisations in January 2004. The open petition protested decicion made in UN Climate change meeting in Milano to include transgenic trees in their climate toolbox. This desicion violated the biodiversity and biosafety agreements and prozesses.

 Stop GE Trees Campaign

The Stop GE Trees Campaign is a national and international alliance of organizations that have united toward the goal of prohibiting the ecologically and socially devastating release of genetically engineered trees into the environment. Global Justice Ecology Project coordinates, administrates and fundraises for the campaign. World Rainforest Movement, based in Uruguay, is the Southern Hub for the Campaign and has materials in Spanish and Portuguese.

 Genetically Modified Trees

Information by the World Rainforest Movement

  • WRM publications on GM Trees
  • Articles published in WRM bulletin
  • WRM special bulletin on GM Trees
  • Video "The Silent Forest"
  • Other relevant information
  • Links

GE Trees: Biotechnology Industry and Science

 Institute for Forest Biotechnology

The Institute promotes the responsible use of biotechnology in forest trees.  We advance the societal, environmental, and economic benefits biotechnology can bring to forests around the world.  The Institute of Forest Biotechnology (IFB) is the only non-profit organization to address the sustainability of forest biotechnology on a global scale.

 ArgorGen

Trees are the world’s most plentiful and versatile source of renewable materials and an important resource for bioenergy. ArborGen is dedicated to improving the sustainability and productivity of purpose grown working forests, providing more wood on less land while preserving native habitats in all their diversity and complexity for future generations.

 Tree Biosafety and Genomics Research Cooperative

The goal of the Tree Biosafety and Genomics Research Cooperative (TBGRC) is to conduct research, technology transfer, and education to facilitate beneficial uses of genetically engineered trees in plantations. The TBGRC seeks to test and develop select innovations, based on progress in molecular biology and agricultural biotechnology, that will ultimately have commercial value to wood-growing and horticultural industries. Research is presently focused on poplars as scientific models for genetic engineering and functional genomic studies.