Opposition to genetically modified food encompasses environmental concerns, food-safety concerns and ethical objections. Potential environmental benefits from transgenic crops are not well accepted. Genetic modification is a credence attribute that cannot be detected by consumers without labelling. In the absence of labelling a pooling equilibrium results in an adverse quality effect for those ...

Abiotic stresses such as extremes of temperature and pH, high salinity and drought, comprise some of the major factors causing extensive losses to crop production worldwide. Understanding how plants respond and adapt at cellular and molecular levels to continuous environmental changes is a pre-requisite for the generation of resistant or tolerant plants to abiotic stresses. In this review we ai...

Agricultural biotechnology--GMOs--has a huge positive impact on farming and farmers but remains controversial among the skeptical public. Curious but anxious consumers, driven by scare stories and pseudo-science provided by anti-GMO activists, seek accurate and authoritative answers to their questions. Here, I address a sample of such queries directed to me from the public, including the ubiqui...

The debate about genetically engineered (GE) crops has become increasingly polarized in the United States, Europe, and some developing countries. The debate polarization has not been resolved in and by the complex and seemingly divergent literature that examines the impacts of the actual and potential adoption and commercialization of GE crops in industrialized and non-industrialized countries....

Introduction The significant and multiple benefits that Genetically Engineered (GE) crops have generated, including increased yield and lower production costs due to reduced insecticide applications, have been well documented in the literature1-2. However, the impact of GE crops on farmers’ health due to the reduction of pesticide use has not been rigorously analyzed. While previous studies hav...

Legislation enacted worldwide to regulate the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in crops, foods and ingredients, necessitated the development of reliable and sensitive methods for GMO detection. In this article, protein- and DNA-based methods employing western blots, enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay, lateral flow strips, Southern blots, qualitative-, quantitative-, real-time- a...

High-grade astrocytoma remains a significant challenge to the clinician and researcher alike. Intense study of the molecular pathogenesis of these tumors has allowed identification of frequent genetic alterations and critical core pathways in this disease. The use of novel mouse genetic tools to study the consequence of specific mutations in brain has led to the development of multiple represen...

This paper reviews the history of the federal regulatory oversight of plant agricultural biotechnology in the USA, focusing on the scientific and political forces moulding the continually evolving regulatory structure in place today. Unlike most other jurisdictions, the USA decided to adapt pre-existing legislation to encompass products of biotechnology. In so doing, it established an overarchi...

The Legal, Ethical, and Environmental Issues of “Agent Orange Corn” and Genetically Modified Crops. This paper addresses the recent flap over the pending approval by the Federal Government of what has become known by some as “Agent Orange Corn” and the greater Genetically Modified Crop Debate by Dr. Albert Clark The Legal, Ethical, and Environmental Issues of “Agent Orange Corn” and Genetically...