Stoneville, Mississippi
May 4, 2006By Robert
Wells
Mississippi State University
is using genetically modified plants in its cotton breeding
program to create better cotton varieties for producers.
“We hope something great will
come out of this to help the farmers,” said Peggy Thaxton, a
cotton breeder at MSU’s Delta Research and Extension Center.
Thaxton is using the pollen
from a Mississippi State transgenic cotton line developed
jointly by MSU cotton breeder Ted Wallace at the Starkville
campus and Monsanto, a producer of genetically modified seed, to
make crosses into public cotton breeding lines.
Thaxton is primarily looking to
increase the yield and fiber quality of MSU’s genetically
modified, or transgenic, cotton line.
“Fiber quality is very
important to me and the program for the future of the farmers,”
Thaxton said. “Hopefully we’ll get some very high quality
transgenic cotton lines developed so we can be competitive in
the global market.”
Bill Meredith, a distinguished
research geneticist and cotton breeder at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture-Agriculture Research Service in Stoneville, agrees
that current fiber qualities and yields need improvement.
“The world is changing and our
primary customers are overseas,” Meredith said. “They desire
fibers that are different from those released in the 1990s. To
get the most for our producers, you need to improve yield and
fiber quality and also make good use of transgenes.”
Other traits Thaxton will be
looking to incorporate are reniform (nematode) resistance,
disease resistance and insect resistance.
“I hope to put traits into the transgenic cotton line that
private companies don’t,” Thaxton said. “They are after yield
because they have to sell their seed, but we’re more flexible in
that we can work with other traits as well.”
Transgenic cotton, or cotton
that has been genetically modified to contain traits artificial
to the plant, is grown on more than 98 percent of Mississippi’s
cotton acreage.
A recent agreement with
Monsanto’s Cotton States business unit allows MSU cotton
breeders to incorporate Monsanto’s transgenic traits into their
breeding program.
“The chances for a producer to
see a variety from Mississippi State are greatly improved if it
is a transgenic,” Wallace said. “Cotton States allows public
material to make it to the market that otherwise wouldn’t. It
gives plant breeders access to technology we wouldn’t normally
have access to.”
Wallace created MSU’s first
transgenic cotton breeding line through Cotton States by sending
a high-performing cotton he developed to Monsanto for trait
integration.
“One of my varieties, MISCOT
8806, performed within 95 percent of the best commercial check
and justified trait integration,” Wallace said. “In May of 2005,
Monsanto sent me approximately 30 progeny rows of transgenic
versions of the original MISCOT 8806 conventional variety to
grow, observe and select the top entries for further testing.
“Performance of these entries
during widespread yield trials across the Cotton Belt this
summer will dictate whether or not Monsanto will attempt to
market one or more of the new transgenic versions of the
original MISCOT 8806 variety,” Wallace added.
The MSU transgenic is
characterized by having the Monsanto patented traits of Bollgard
II, which offers increased insect resistance, and Roundup Ready
Flex, which offers increased weed control.
Dr. Thaxton has access to the
Mississippi State transgenic breeding line as well,” Wallace
said. “She is making forward crosses with it so hopefully there
will be offspring with Bollgard II and Roundup Ready Flex in
them.”
Thaxton made the first
transgenic crosses this winter in a greenhouse in Stoneville.
“A lot of the material that I
cross with is Dr. Wallace’s nectariless material,” Thaxton said.
“I’m crossing with the nectariless, the short fiber content
line, the smooth leaf and the high fiber quality line.”
Thaxton said after the crosses
open up, they will be planted in the greenhouse for a seed
increase this summer.
“There’s going to be a lot of
seed increase this year,” Thaxton said. “We’re probably also
going to send some of these to Mexico next winter for a seed
increase.
“We have to make sure the
transgenic traits are in the plant, and that takes a lot of
seed,” Thaxton said. “Hopefully in about four years, we’ll have
enough seed with the transgenes in there that we can start
planting yield trials.”
In addition to the transgenic
breeding in the greenhouse, Thaxton also will have 30 acres of
conventional cotton planted this summer in the field.
“The main objective of our
breeding program is still to develop improved conventional
breeding lines that will be released to private companies with
better yields and fiber quality traits,” Thaxton said. “We like
to work with all the useful genes, including transgenes, in a
forward breeding program, but the transgenics breeding is just a
side project right now.”
Support for producers, she
added, is the ultimate goal of the breeding program.
“We’re such a large cotton
producing area here,” Thaxton said. “We have a potential to
improve the cotton variety and a chance to give back to the
growers. This is something we need to do.” |