TULARE, Calif. – The first American crop to contain an end user trait has been approved for sale.
A synthetic gene taken from a micro-organism that lives near hot water vents on the ocean’s floor provides a trait that improves distilling efficiency in corn.
Syngenta, which developed the hybrid corn, said the trait improves energy efficiency and ethanol production by eight percent. The trait causes corn to make its own alpha amylase, which ethanol manufacturers now add to the fermentation process.
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However, some members of the American grain industry didn’t welcome news of the new trait.
“USDA has failed to provide the public with sufficient scientific data on the economic impacts of contamination on food production,” said
Mary Waters, president of the North American Millers’ Association.
Waters said Syngenta’s 3272 amylase corn trait, which it calls Enogen, might cause significant problems with food corn quality if it was commingled with milling type corn.
She said the U.S. Department of Agriculture failed to properly show how farmers and distillers would contain the crop and prevent it from mixing with other seed.
Syngenta expects 25,000 acres of the crop to be planted this spring.
More than one-third of the U.S. corn crop is now used for ethanol production, so success with the new Syngenta genetics could drive a rapid expansion of acres for Enogenenhanced corn.
The company said in a news release that the crop can be contained by ensuring that growers produce it only for local distillers and by paying them incentives to produce only the Enogen corn.
Farmers growing it under contract would be expected to take other measures to ensure grain segregation and minimal pollen flow.
Millers are worried about Enogen because of what happened with Star- Link, a non-food genetically modified corn variety developed for livestock production that showed up in human food corn exports in 2000.
As a result, the Aventis CropScience variety was withdrawn from the market.
Syngenta said it is prepared to work with the industry to ensure that corn exports are not endangered.
Alpha amylase is already an improved food ingredient, it added.
Steve McNinch, chief executive officer of Western Plains Energy in Oakley, Kansas, where the variety was tested, said his company was impressed with the efficiency gains and doesn’t want to go back to using non-Enogen corn and adding a liquid amylase supplement to its ethanol processes.
The National Corn Growers’ Association also welcomed the new variety. It follows the approval two weeks ago of RoundUp Ready alfalfa and sugar beets.
Jerry Gano of WL Research in Fresno, California, said Monsanto’s new Genuity alfalfa is a boon for American cattle producers.
“We ended up waiting a little longer than we anticipated for its release after it was first approved and then put on hold by the courts until USDA could show it met all the conditions placed on it,” he said at the recent World Ag Expo farm show in Tulare.
Newly retired dairy producer Jim Captein of Galt, Calif., said the American dairy industry is under so much financial pressure that farmers need every possible financial advantage if they are to return to profitability.
“We need all the tools we can get,” he said.
Gano said the glyphosate tolerant trait in alfalfa would help producers control costs and reduce their use of other herbicides.
