Barriers continue to fall for GM wheat production

Researchers at Agriculture Canada in Lethbridge have planted their first greenhouse plots of wheat with genes edited to better receive and use sunlight.

“I think it’s fantastic. It’s good for our industry and it is exactly what’s needed going forward,” Gunther Jochum, president of the Wheat Growers Association, said in an article on our front page last week.

Wheat is particularly suited for gene editing because its hexaploid (six parent) genome contains genes from three ancestral grasses. It’s five times larger than our human diploid genome, so there’s a lot to work with.

But gene editing techniques can only work with what’s already there. Argentine company Bioceres swapped a sunflower gene into its genetically modified wheat. Such transgenic varieties are what are generally meant when the term GMO is used.

This year, Bioceres began distributing its HB4 wheat to seed retailers in neighbouring Brazil after that country approved it in 2023. The company claims it produces 20 per cent greater yields under drought conditions.

What has changed? As recently as 2018, there was much uproar when a few of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready wheat plants were discovered along an access road to an oil rig in southern Alberta. Its appearance was a mystery, considering it was pulled off the market in the mid-2000s due to producer and consumer backlash.

When it comes to genetic modification, wheat appears to be a special case. Other transgenic crops such as soybeans, corn and canola have been widely accepted in North America, offering built-in insect resistance and herbicide resistance. In fact, in the 1990s, farmers in Brazil and Paraguay were so eager to plant GM soy that they smuggled seeds from Argentina.