Is genetic engineering more likely than other plant breeding techniques to produce nitrogen efficient crops?
Unlike genetic engineering, traditional crop breeding has already improved NUE. Over the past several decades traditional breeding has improve wheat NUE by about 20 to 40 percent in several regions. Data on the genetic potential of crop genes associated with NUE suggest that traditional breeding, or breeding enhanced by increasing knowledge about crop biology and genetics, can continue to make substantial contributions to improving NUE. The limited data available so far do not reveal any advantages of GE over crop breeding for improving NUE. GE has not yet brought to commercial use any crops with improved complex traits like NUE. Comparisons between GE and traditional breeding in No Sure Fix show that there is no reason at this time to believe that improvements that might be accomplished by GE could not also be accomplished as quickly as using non-transgenic breeding methods.
