Terminator seeds and it’s threats to sustainable farming

Terminator seeds

What Is a Terminator Seeds?

Genetic use restriction technology, also known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is the name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by activating some genes only in response to certain stimuli, especially to cause second-generation seeds to be infertile. It is a major violation of the right of farmers to save and reuse their own seeds. Because the crops produce sterile seeds, farmers need to buy a new batch of seeds every year rather than using the traditional farming method of saving, reusing, and sharing seeds.

Some biotechnology firms use seeds that require the farmers to use a special compound to activate the seed so that farmers that are using genetically modified seeds become dependent on the biotechnology firm if they want to plant the seeds from their crops.

Any technology that the biotechnology firms use to prevent the farmer from saving, sharing, or reusing seeds and control the reuse of seeds threatens both biodiversity and sustainable farming methods in developing countries.

How Do Terminator Seeds Work?

Terminator seeds contain a repressor gene that kills the embryo in any seed that a genetically modified plant protected by terminator technology produces. Even though the seeds produced by the plants look normal, they are not viable and cannot be used to plant more crops, which forces the farmer to buy new seeds from the biotechnology firm selling the genetically modified plant.

Since saving and cross-breeding seeds is an integral part of traditional African practices, farmers in African countries are much less likely to use terminator seeds than farmers in other third world methods in Africa be more sustainable than the solutions offered by biotechnology firms.

Advantages of Terminator seeds:

  • Prevent the escape of transgenes into wild relatives and prevent any impact on biodiversity.
  • Reduce the propagation of volunteer plants.
  • Farmers will use new seeds every year leads to maximum production.
  • It can be used to limit the spread of genes from GMOs to other plants in the natural environment.
  • This technology will induce the private sector to make more investment in the research and development of pure lines varieties and open-pollinated varieties because in these varieties the farmers do not change the seeds each year.

Disadvantages of Terminator seeds:

  • The production of sterile seeds by these plants would render the seeds useless.
  • Harvested seeds are used only for consumption. It may cause health hazards for animals as well as human beings. Because it has been treated with some chemicals before sowing.
  • There is a danger of this technology affecting unintended targets. It is possible that these plants would transfer pollen to nearby wild type crops and cause sterility in their seeds too.
  • Some genotype of a particular crop grown across the Country leads to genetic vulnerability to pests and diseases.
  • Location specific and season-bound varieties cannot be grown.
  • Tetracycline is a chemical used to active the toxic gene, which may alter the soil fauna and flora.

The country’s rich genetic diversity will be lost. The maximum crop field may be covered by just one genotype, and it will eliminate the farm conservation traditions and location-specific varieties.

Writer: Sakil Ansari (Student, BSc Ag 4th Sem, IAAS Paklihawa)

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