Wide Angle: 10 Genetically Engineered Crops

"It's a complicated issue," says James E. McWilliams, author of American Pests and professor of history at Texas State University. We've just started talking about genetically engineered crops, so this seems like an understatement.

For years, opponents have argued that genetically engineered plants wreak havoc with human health and nature, and accuse plant biotech companies, such as Monsanto,  of putting profits before people. On the other hand, agricultural biotech proponents argue that engineered crops enable farmers to grow at a time of global food shortages, insidious pests, weeds and extreme weather.

But fiddling around with plants dates back to the 19th century, long before the debate of modified foods boiled up. Back then, scientists figured out how to hybridize plants in the same species, a process that takes many years, but eventually encourages plants to come out with the best traits.

In the 1980s, researchers pioneered transgenic plants, crossing species lines, which offered a much faster way to develop crops with desired traits. Now, says McWilliams, about 81 percent of the nation's corn and 89 percent of our soy is genetically modified.

If this makes you want to run out to the nearest green grocer, wait a sec. McWilliams notes that even organic farming frequently involves chemicals such as sodium nitrate for fertilization and concentrated nicotine as an insecticide.

Plant virologist Roger N. Beachy, president of the Donald Danforth Plant Center in St. Louis, Missouri, thinks that environmentalists and biotech experts can emerge from the cloud of controversy, find common ground, and move toward green goals together. So, whether transgenic crops make you think "yum-yum" or "no ma'am," McWilliams and Beachy share what's cooking:

1. Biofortified Soya Beans
DuPont's Pioneer and Monsanto are each working on biofortified soya beans that would provide the same kind of omega-3 fatty acids that we currently consume in foods like fish, eggs, and nuts. Getting more of this heart-healthy oil from the beans could mean a break for over-fished areas. Beachy says expect the beans to come out some time in the next two or three years.

2. Edible Cotton Seeds
By nature, cotton seeds are inedible because they contain gossypol, a component that keeps bugs away. In 2006, Texas A&M University and Cotton Inc. collaborated on research to produce genetically engineered seeds without the inedible part while keeping it in the plant for protection. The researchers made nutty-tasting meal from the seeds that could be used for flour, but the discovery has many regulatory and logistic hurdles to clear before it could be a reality in cotton-growing areas.

3. Jatropha
Food or energy? With gas prices soaring, biofuel advocates find themselves going toe-to-toe with farmers. Jatropha is an inedible plant whose seeds produce a liquid like palm oil that could be used for biofuel. Earlier this year the plant caused political tension in India, where tribal communities accused the government of destroying their native crops to plant jatropha for fuel needs. Plant breeding and genetic engineering will result in high-yielding jatropha that will increase overall production and potentially reduce the hectares needed; Roger Beachy says jatropha and other oil-producing, non-food plants also have the potential to produce bioplastics that can degrade in landfills.

4. Golden Rice
More than 120 million children globally don't get enough vitamin A and as a result are at risk for blindness. Back in the 1990s, a scientific team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology by Ingo Potrykis and collaborators at Syngenta Company discovered that adding several key genes from flowering plants to rice could dramatically increase the amount of beta carotene, a molecular that human beings can convert to Vitamin A. Even though the research ran into intellectual property rights problems, a public-private partnership between the inventors and agrichemical company Syngenta allowed the research to continue. Golden rice was successfully field-tested in Louisiana four years ago, but the inventors blame bureaucratic measures for slowing its adoption abroad.

5. Flood-Resistant Rice
Husband and wife team Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak bridge the biotech-environmental divide in their book Tomorrow's Table, arguing that genetic-engineering and organic farming can be blended. Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at University of California-Davis, has been working with David Mackill of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines on genetically-modified rice that can withstand flooding. If field trials are successful, the rice could be available as early as next year.