Do Now 3.26 (Week 30)

• Objective: Describe and evaluate the impact of transgenic organisms on food production.

• Tasks:1. Pass forward last week’s Do Nows2. Syllabus change: All topics moved forward 1 day,

except review and test (Th/F).3. If you were a technology leader for an agricultural

biotech organization, what genes or characteristics would you put into food crops? Why?

Corn……is pretty important in our society.

Corn Chips

McDonald’s Meals

Drinks

Most Foods

Your Car

Demand is growing:

Demand is growing:

Demand is growing:

European Corn Borer:

European Corn Borer:

Whatever shall we do?

Option A: Insecticides

Whatever shall we do?Option B: I.P.M.

Whatever shall we do?

Option C: Genetic Technology

Introducing Bacillus thuringiensis:

Enter Bt Corn…

Yay!!!! – Problem solved, right?

Problem 2: Weeds. Product = RoundupReady ® Crops

This field of corn has lots of weeds in it. Weeds take nutrients from the soil the corn plant needs.

RoundUp Ready Corn

• RoundUp is a chemical that kills plants.

• 90% of the corn grown in the US is genetically modified to have resistance to RoundUp.

• Since the corn is resistant, farmers can spray roundup and kill everything but the corn

It worked for a while…

But there was VARIATION in the weeds• A tiny % of the weeds were naturally

resistant to the RoundUp and survived…

ResistantWeed

Now, that weed had offspring… and they had offspring… etc. etc.

• Since resistant weeds are the only ones that survive and reproduce, they are now far more common in corn fields.

ResistantWeed

ResistantWeed

ResistantWeed

ResistantWeed

ResistantWeed