Pew Summary Charts (Pew, 2001)

 

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Summary Chart of Food Crop Products
Summary Chart of Tree Products
Summary Chart of Grass and Flower Products
Summary Chart of Industrial, Pharmaceutical and Remediation Products
Summary Chart of Mammals
Summary Chart of Aquatic Organisms
Summary Chart of Insects

 

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Summary Chart of Food Crop Products (Source: Pew 2001)

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Arabidopsis	30	Use this flowering mustard plant as a model organism to research how plants can withstand adverse environmental conditions such as flooding, drought and salinity.	Arabidopsis is currently being engineered to produce compounds that help plants survive in soils with high salt levels.	Being tested in research greenhouses.
Banana	22	Find a way to make banana plants resistant to black sigatoka, a leaf fungus that widely infects the fruit and can destroy the entire plant.	Clone several anti-fungal genes and incorporate them into the DNA of trial banana plants.	Being tested in research fields and greenhouses.
Cereal crops	33	Enhance the iron content in cereal crops such as rice.	Ferritin, a protein that causes plants to store iron, has been introduced to the rice genome; preliminary research shows a three-fold improvement in the iron storage capacity of the rice plants.	Being tested in research fields.
Field and sweet corn, soybeans, potatoes and cotton	25	Engineer crop plants so they are resistant to worms (including the European corn borer, the Southwestern corn borer, the cornstalk borer, corn earworm and fall armyworm), which eat through the stalks and devastate entire acreages.	Several delta-endotoxin genes have been cloned from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and incorporated in the DNA of these crops. The crops release a toxin that kills worm larvae when they try to eat the plant stalks.	Available commercially

 

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Papaya	21	Develop resistance to papaya ringspot virus, which devastated the Hawaiian crop in the 1950s.	Use viral coat protein technology to create resistance in transgenic papaya by using a gene from the virus itself to disarm the pathogen.	Available commercially; in use in Hawaii since 1997.
Potato	22	Stop wilting and death of the plant, caused by infection with a fungal pathogen.	Incorporate anti-fungal defensins from alfalfa.	Being tested in research greenhouses.
Potato	23	Eliminate or curb late potato blight, a destructive plant  fungus associated with the Irish potato famine that causes severe plant and leaf damage.	Use a gene from soybeans to create a protein that confers resistance to blight.	Undergoing laboratory investigation.
Potato	24	Stop blackleg and soft rot diseases caused by a bacterial pathogen.	Develop transgenic potatoes that produce a substance that breaks down the cell wall of bacteria.	Undergoing laboratory investigation.
Potato	40	Reduce fat absorption during frying, to create a lower-fat fried potato.	Engineer transgenic potatoes to contain a gene for an enzyme affecting starch synthesis. The resulting potatoes had up to 60 percent more starch than non-engineered strains, causing the potatoes to take up less fat during frying.	Being tested in research greenhouses

 

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Potato and banana	27	Eliminate or reduce plant damage from nematodes, microscopic worms that feed on roots and are among the most abundant parasites in the world.	Incorporate genes for defense proteins that occur naturally in rice and sunflowers.	Being tested in research fields. (So far tests indicate a 70 percent nematode resistance).
Potato	21	Eliminate or curb potato leaf roll virus, which damages potatoes.	Use viral coat protein resistance strategy and anti-sense technology to develop resistance to the virus.	Available commercially.
Potato	32	Maximize yield.	Produce transgenic potatoes with more protein, to increase both tubers and yield.	Being tested in research laboratories and greenhouses. (So far, an increase of 3 to 3.5 percent has been achieved).
Rice	23	Reduce major fungal diseases such as blast and sheath blight, which cause from 11 to 30 percent of crop losses annually.	Develop transgenic strains with multiple resistances to both sheath blight and stem boring insects.	Being tested in research fields.
Rice	32	Maximize yield.	Modify transgenic rice with a gene that inhibits formation of certain proteins and, thus, prolongs the grain-filling period of the plant.	Being tested in research fields. (In the first trial, this rice demonstrated a 40 percent increase in productivity).

 

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Rice (aka “Golden Rice”)	33	Overcome lack of beta- carotene, a nutrient widely studied for its role in cancer prevention, as well as iron deficiency.	Genetically engineer the rice to contain beta-carotene, as well as enhance its iron content.	Being tested in greenhouses and research fields.
Soy, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beet and wheat	28	Eliminate weeds that compete with crops for soil nutrients, water and sunlight.	Genetically engineer the crops so they can tolerate the herbicides used to kill weeds, and survive herbicide applications.	Available commercially.
Soybean and canola oils	34	Improve fatty acid profiles in these oils so they are more nutritious.	One example has been the creation of transgenic soybean oil that has 80 percent more oleic acid and no transfatty acids.	Available commercially.
Soybeans	27	Eliminate or reduce damage from nematodes, microscopic parasitic worms.	Use genetic markers, a means of identifying genes with particular traits, to create soybean plants resistant to the nematode.	Being tested in research greenhouses.
Sweet potato	21	Fight sweet potato feathery mottle virus, which can cause heavy crop losses.	Use viral coat protein resistance strategy to develop virus resistant plants.	Being tested in research fields.

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Tomatoes	32	Increase the anti-oxidant properties of tomatoes.	Engineer tomatoes with more lycopene, a powerful anti- oxidant, and increased levels of lutein, known to help fight eye disease.	Undergoing laboratory investigation. (Scientists have already produced tomatoes with 2.5 times as much lycopene, as  well as higher levels of lutein).
Tomatoes	38	Control the ripening process to reduce spoilage caused by over-ripening that may occur during transport of produce to market.	Use transgenic techniques to regulate production of the plant hormone ethylene, which confers the ability to initiate or delay the ripening process.	Being tested in research fields.
Vegetable staples such as potato, cassava and plantain	34	Increase total protein content.	Introduce a non-allergenic seed albumin gene to increase protein content.	Being tested in research greenhouses. (Transgenic tubers produced so far had 35 to 45 percent more protein and enhanced levels of essential amino acids, as well as a yield increase).

 

Food Crop Product	Page	The Objective	The Solution	Status of Research
Wheat	21	Combat barley yellow dwarf virus, which can destroy the plants and prevent seed formation.	Use the viral coat protein approach to develop resistance to the virus.	Undergoing laboratory investigation.
Wheat	38	Reduce allergenicity in one of the most commonly allergenic foods.	Genetically engineer wheat to overexpress the gene that controls the enzyme that modifies the protein in wheat that causes allergic reactions.	Being tested in research greenhouses.
Wheat and barley	23	Eliminate a serious plant fungus, Botrytis cinerea, which causes severe damage to the plant and grain kernels.	Insert the gene for a natural plant defense compound that is found in certain wine grapes.	Being tested in research fields.
Yellow crookneck squash	21	Curb or kill mosaic virus that can cause blemishes and rot.	Viral coat protein approach was used to develop resistance to the virus.	Approved for commercial use.

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Summary Chart of Tree Products (Source: Pew, 2001)

Tree Product

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The Objective

The Solution