A revolutionary new seed treatment from Morflora could improve the world’s agricultural output, without the need for worrying genetic engineering
Even though organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices are on the rise, feeding a hungry world demands that commercial farmers rely on genetically engineered (GMO) seeds to boost production and fend off diseases.
But environmentalists fear that GMO crops are a sort of Frankenstein with unknown future consequences. The Israeli company Morflora now has an alternative seed treatment in the works that is so revolutionary it is short-listed for Best Novel Agricultural Biotechnology in the 2012 international AGROW awards, and recently won a Red Herring business award in the Top 100 Europe category.
The trademarked product, TraitUP, will be on the market in 2013.
“Our technology is an innovative trait delivery platform. We can deliver any genetic trait to any seed, and the delivered gene does not transform the genome of the treated plant,” Dotan Peleg, CEO of Morflora, said.
“We will not have any moral issues that the GMO community faces. We keep the plant intact so that the next generation of seeds of the plants will look totally unchanged. It is a paradigm shift.”
The Morflora TraitUP solution, in testing in Israeli fields and international seed developers, has the potential to immediately transfer desirable plant traits without any of the side effects or risks of GMOs, Dotan said.
It could protect vegetable seeds from infestation, fungus, bacteria and drought.
Like a vaccine for plants Recently, Dotan saw for himself the effect of severe drought on cornfields in Nebraska. Soy crops had better defenses and were able to survive. Could a hardy soy gene be inserted into corn seed to achieve a similar effect? “Once gene trait discovery companies will find this drought-tolerant gene in soy they will have a new way to apply it instead of creating a transgenic crop,” he said.
“They can use Morflora to apply these traits via seed treatment, bypassing all the breeding cycles and going straight to enhancing a product already ready for shipment.”
