Essay: talk about the opportunities and challenges of developing genetically modified crops in China

Abstract: In the past decade, China's total food production has been hovering. Population growth, food production and resource and environmental conflicts are intensifying, in the development process of China's agricultural modernization, agricultural biotechnology is one of the very important scientific and technological support to genetic improvement as the main goal of agricultural biotechnology breeding as a frontier field of life sciences, is gradually becoming a solution to the problems faced by the food production of the key. The emerging industrialization of crop biotechnology breeding has become an international trend, and the agricultural biotechnology industry has become the focus of the new economic and technological competition, and will likely change the future agricultural and economic patterns, and its role is irreplaceable.

Keywords: genetically modified (GM) crops, agricultural biotechnology, biotechnology breeding, China, biotechnology industry, food production, total food production, modernization and development

Text: During 1996-2009, with the large-scale cultivation and promotion of genetically modified crops (hereinafter referred to as GM crops) worldwide, the GM crops are now widely used in the agricultural industry. With the large-scale planting and promotion of GM crops (hereinafter referred to as "GM crops") in the world during 1996~2009, the global reduction of pesticide use on GM crops was 392,730 tons, i.e., a reduction of 8.7%, and at the same time, a reduction of 17.1% in the environmental impact.The development of GM crops has posed a new challenge to the pesticide industry, but it also brings new opportunities for certain pesticide products. This is the recent reporter in the eleventh national pesticide exchange will get the information.

According to statistics, during the 15 years from 1996 to 2010, the planting area of GM crops has been expanding globally, with a 30-fold increase over the past 15 years, and a cumulative planting of 1 billion hectares, with a 50-fold increase in market value, reaching 12 billion U.S. dollars in 2010. Countries and farmers growing GM crops have seen increasing returns, and according to a survey by the Brazilian Seed Association, Brazil has saved $5.9 billion over the past 10 years by planting GM crops, and it is expected that Brazilian farmers will potentially save $80 billion over the next 10 years as a result of the adoption of GM crops. Planting GM crops has increased to 29 countries, planting species continue to increase, in addition to the planting of genetically modified soybeans, corn, cotton, the newly developed, and successive commercialization of wheat, potatoes, papaya, etc., visible GM crops due to its market value and other factors are highly welcomed by some countries.

It is a challenge but also an opportunity

According to the editor-in-chief of China's pesticide Hu Xiao-shang, from 2006 to 2010, the annual growth rate of GM crops are double-digit, while the traditional pesticide market, in addition to the annual production rate of 10% growth in 2008, are single-digit or negative growth.

From a pesticide perspective, the cumulative area of GM crops from 2006 to 2010 was 623.3 million hectares, of which 393.12 million hectares, or 63.0%, were herbicide-tolerant crops. And most of the herbicide-tolerant crops are glyphosate-resistant, which drastically squeezes the market for selective herbicides. According to experts' estimation, due to the emergence of herbicide-resistant crops, herbicide varieties have been reduced by 10%~15%, which has also led to the increase in the difficulty of creating new herbicides in recent years, and it takes 40,000~50,000 compounds to delete a new herbicide, and the research input of selective herbicides by various companies has been reduced. 1996~2009, the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) insect-resistant crops reduced the insecticides by 189,000 tons and the area of GM insect-resistant crops increased by 7% per year on average. Crop area increased by an average of 7% per year, posing a serious challenge to the insecticide market.

And from the crop point of view, the development of GM rice will lead to a major adjustment of pesticides for rice, for example, the cultivation of trans-Bt insect-resistant rice which has obtained the national safety certificate will make the use of insecticides for rice drop by 80%, and the glyphosate-resistant rice under development can prevent and eliminate all weeds. Future GM wheat will also have a significant impact on the pesticide industry, for example, aphid-resistant wheat has been developed in the U.K., and Dow AgroSciences and DuPont have each developed an insect-resistant/herbicide-resistant wheat, and it is expected that the industrialized cultivation of these GM wheats will have a huge impact on the existing system of wheat herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides in 8 to 10 years' time.

Challenges and opportunities co-exist, the development of GM crops also brings significant opportunities for the pesticide industry, for example, the large-scale planting of glyphosate-resistant crops will make the glyphosate landscape unlimited, 24-D-resistant and "fop" herbicides (arylphenoxypropionate herbicides) crops are about to go on the market will make 24-D and dicamba ushered in a new world of development, as well as other herbicide-resistant crops. There are also other herbicide-tolerant crops such as glufosinate, bromoxynil, sulfonylureas and imidazolinones. These herbicide-tolerant crops bring new vigor to old herbicide varieties. Fungicides, due to the delay in the development of genetically modified disease-resistant crops, fungicides there is still a lot of room for development, for example, wheat is the only large-scale cultivation of food crops has not yet been planted on a large scale, disease-resistant wheat is also in the research and development stage, it is estimated that 10 to 15 years before the realization of large-scale cultivation of other crops resistant to GM crop research is also lagging behind, so fungicides there is still a great deal of room for development.

Tolerance and acceptance of positive response

In the face of GM crops on the pesticide industry's challenges and opportunities, how do multinational companies respond? Through strategic adjustments, multinational corporations have increased their investment in GM crops and R&D, and developed related GM crops from their own advantageous pesticides, such as glyphosate-resistant Roundup Ready crops developed by Monsanto, and glufosinate-ammonium phosphate-resistant Libertylink crops developed by Bayer. In addition, there are more examples of cooperation between several giants, such as the cooperation between BASF and Monsanto to develop GM crop systems using dicamba, and the result of the joint efforts is to strengthen each other's monopoly in the seed field. In addition to cooperation, several agrochemical giants have further strengthened their monopoly through the acquisition of seed companies. For example, in the past 20 years, Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer and Daononkers have acquired more than 200 seed companies, and now completely control the global seed market, with Monsanto becoming the world's largest seed company.

At the 2011 Agrochemicals Asia-Pacific Summit, when talking about the challenges of GM crops to the pesticide industry, Mr. Dushan, senior vice president of Dragon Light CropScience Ltd. said that every enterprise has its own foothold, and for the emergence of a new thing, we should hold a tolerant attitude, and GM crops are decided by each country to adopt, for example, the European Union member states are cautious about the GM crops, and economic factors are the main factors for enterprises to implement new crops. Attitude, economic factors are the driving force for enterprises to implement new products, gold will shine, GM requires a lot of technical collection, so ensure the quality of their products will still be competitive.