Coming soon to British fields, GM wheat sprinkled with gold

a NEW strain of controversial GM wheat said to boost yields has been created – with a sprinkle of gold dust.

Scientists will use tiny gold particles coated with modified DNA to transport new genes into the plants.

They say tests achieved yield gains of 2040 per cent and now want to grow their so-called ‘wonder wheat’ in open field trials in the UK next year.

But anti- GM campaigners have dismissed the experiment as ‘bogus’ and a ‘techno fix’. advocates for genetically modified crops insist the technology is vital to boost food production in line with a predicted 1.5billion increase in world population by the mid-century. The team behind the new strain at rothamsted research Centre, Hertfordshire, say trials will show whether yield increases can be achieved under commercial conditions.

Professor Christine raines, study leader and head of biological sciences at the University of Essex, said wheat production was increasing by 30 per cent a year in 1977 – but current growth is almost zero.

‘If you bring the growing population together with this plateau, you can see we definitely have a gap, and we need to feed the world,’ she said. The process works by altering an enzyme that plays an impor- tant role in photosynthesis, the complex chemical process which uses the energy from sunlight to make plants grow.

researchers say the chances of the modified wheat sharing its genes with local wild or farmed plants during the trials was ‘very low’. a 10ft ‘pollen barrier’ would be placed around the plots and the whole site surrounded by a 65ft plant-free buffer zone.

But Liz O’Neill, director of GM Freeze said: ‘World food production already far exceeds the needs of generations to come but people still go hungry. Techno-fixes like GM wheat won’t change that because they don’t address the real problems.’

Opponents also point out that previous GM crops such as soya and maize failed to deliver expected yield increases.