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None could, or ever can, get over the natural law that over-expression of any trait has to be at the expense of certain other clusters of traits. Besides, it suited the seed companies to lure the farmers by promises of high-yielding and disease-resistant crop-plants and thereby reduce them to dependence for seed supplies every year. Now, a ‘‘terminator technology’’ has been developed to deliberately create sterile seeds. This is done by selectively programming a plant's DNA to kill its own embryo. This is a sinister plan to tie up the farmer in permanent dependence on the seed corporations. There was no need to tread the tortuous path of transgenic engineering and pursue the retrograde ‘‘terminator technology’’ if only the scientists, instead of being confined to their subdiscipline-bound ‘tunnel view’, had cared to remember (i) that Nature keeps throwing newer and newer—i.e. differing — populations of any species for adaptation to changing ecological niche ; that the differentiating intraspecies populations keep evolving to form newer and different species ; and that man can never cope with Nature either in creating beneficial species or in ordaining their co-evolution. (ii) That the process of natural selection, on the basis the genetic type's differential reproduction capacity and the differential survival of their progeny, eliminates those with less favorable characteristics and keeps only the most adaptable and the fittest ; |
(iii) that over and above natural selection, the artificial selection by man limits the choice to the most productive individuals of the population of the subspecies, cultures them specially for their multiplication to take productivity to higher levels ; and that crossbreeding between genetically different lines that the farmers undertake all the time to bring in hybrid vigour, takes productivity to its peak ; (iv) that genetic variability within a population (i.e. between individuals) is the very condition of operation of the process of the natural selection ; that when this variation is sought to be blotted out or even narrowed, choice of the fittest would be impeded ; (v) that the differing genetic structures of different species and sub-species and of different individuals within the population of any species is Nature's way of storing diversity in populations and individuals ; and this is the insurance for sustainability against any sudden ecological change ; and (vi) that the highest productivity can be attained only by understanding these laws, observing these processes, and reverentially participating in the process in the Nature-harmonic way. Man’s selection of the most productive strains and the most productive individuals within those strains has in the past led to highest productivity. Spoiling the genetic structures of different genotypes, subspecies and species will only be throwing a monkey wrench in Nature’s beneficent works. [ Courtesy : Sansthakul ] |