GM: Drought-tolerant Maize

In one of my previous blogs, I mentioned the increasing occurrence of drought seasons in many regions of Africa and the massive impact it is having on food security. In this blog post, I aim to discuss a possible solution to counteract these drastic climatic changes with a specific focus on Genetically Modified (GM) crops using drought-tolerant Maize as a key example.

What is the threat?

Globally, the agricultural industry is the largest consumer of freshwater, taking approximately 70% of it, a proportion which is expected to rise with future demands. Therefore, it is necessary for the agricultural sector to start adopting and prioritising water conservation policies and practices (Boretti and Rosa, 2019). This necessity is being intensified by the growing threat of climate change. Indeed, Africa is expected to be of one of the continents most affected by these changes as droughts and floods are becoming increasingly frequent and widespread, impacting people and agriculture across the continent (Masih et al 2014). Many countries in Africa already have limited freshwater availability and in addition, deficient rainfall can severely affect the rates at which natural water stores are replenished, which means more and more water sources will become unreliable. However, technological solutions have the potential to counteract these current and future precarious water conditions using innovations such as GM crops.

What are GM crops?

It is often difficult to wrap your head around what GM crops are and what they do. Well, it simply means that the original genes of a crop have been modified to express certain favourable traits. GM crops use gene editing technology which transfers important genetic information from one organism to another. Although many people believe this is a relatively new technology it has been around for at least 40 years. Nevertheless, contemporary research is currently trying to advance GM seed technologies that express new traits such as resistance to fungi and viruses, salinity, bio-fortification and most notably, create new drought-tolerant variants (Godfray et al. 2010).

A-maize-ing?

A key drought-tolerant GM crop I will be discussing is Maize as it is commonly produced, eaten and sold for income. The food security and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa depend on maize production. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40% of maize-growing areas face drought stresses, accounting to yield losses of 10-25%. It is evident that this is a massive problem in sub-Saharan Africa and so GM drought-tolerant maize has the potential to be the solution to this problem. This type of maize has been through many tests and pilot studies have proven maize to be very successful in maintain yields. However, the accessibility of this GM maize poses many challenges. For example, in Malawi, 61% of maize plots use drought-tolerant seeds whereas in Zimbabwe only 9% do (Fisher et al, 2015). According to Lunduka et al. (2013), this difference is due to Malawi’s large-scale Farner Input Subsidy Program (FISP), which supports and teaches smallholder farmers how to plant and cultivate GM maize seeds.

A major reason why many countries still have not massively adopted GM maize seeds is because of lack of availability and knowledge as some smallholder farmers believe these GM seeds will decrease yields and make them work more (Fisher et al, 2015). In my previous blog post, I wrote about AGRA’s importance in improving widespread accessibility to “good” seeds such as drought-tolerant maize. It is imperative for these new GM technologies to be shared and communicated clearly across diverse African farmers so farmers gain trust and understand that productivity and resilience of maize will drastically improve.