Bugs — for good, or evil?

current procedure of genetically modifying seeds for crops such as corn and soy before they grow into plants.

The military research agency says its goal is to protect the nation’s food supply from threats like drought, crop disease and bioterrorism by using insects to infect plants with viruses that protect against such dangers.

“Food security is national security,” said Blake Bextine, who heads the 2-year-old project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.

The technology could work in different ways. In the first phase, aphids — tiny bugs that feed by sucking sap from plants — infected plants with a virus that temporarily brought about a trait. But researchers are also trying to see if viruses can alter the plant’s genes themselves to be resistant to dangers throughout A photo provided by the Boyce Thompson Institute shows corn leaf aphids used in a study to carry engineered viruses to modify plants. the plant’s life.

“They’re talking about massive release of genetic modification by means of insects,” said Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y., who has studied genetic modification. He wasn’t part of the Science paper but said Insect Allies technology could end up being destructive.

Kaebnick questioned how well the viruses and insects carrying them could be controlled. “It might be impossible to remove them” once they are introduced into farmers’ fields, he said.

Though it’s not a household name, DARPA helped develop the Internet and its mission is to research pivotal new technologies. The agency announced the Insect Allies project in 2016.

Guy Reeves, a coauthor of the Science paper and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, said the technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an agricultural tool. As a result, he said, DARPA could be sending an alarming message.

The papers’ European authors say the mere announcement of the program may have motivated other countries to develop their own programs. They say the project also underscores the need for greater discussion of ethical concerns in such developing technologies.