GM Watch
  • Main Menu
    • Home
    • News
      • Newsletter subscription
      • Daily Digest
      • News Reviews
      • News Languages
    • Articles
      • GM Myth Makers
      • GM Reports
      • GM Quotes
      • GM Myths
      • Non-GM successes
      • GM Firms
        • Monsanto: a history
        • Monsanto: resources
        • Bayer: a history
        • Bayer: resources
    • Videos
      • Latest Videos
      • Must see videos
      • Cornell videos
      • Agriculture videos
      • Labeling videos
      • Animals videos
      • Corporations videos
      • Corporate takeover videos
      • Contamination videos
      • Latin America videos
      • India videos
      • Asia videos
      • Food safety videos
      • Songs videos
      • Protests videos
      • Biofuel myths videos
      • Index of GM crops and foods
      • Index of speakers
      • Health Effects
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donations
    • How donations will help us
News and comment on genetically modified foods and their associated pesticides    
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Newsletter subscription
    • News Reviews
    • News Languages
      • Notícias em Português
      • Nieuws in het Nederlands
      • Nachrichten in Deutsch
    • Archive
      • 2021 articles
      • 2020 articles
      • 2019 articles
      • 2018 articles
      • 2017 articles
      • 2016 articles
      • 2015 articles
      • 2014 articles
      • 2013 articles
      • 2012 articles
      • 2011 articles
      • 2010 articles
      • 2009 articles
      • 2008 articles
      • 2007 articles
      • 2006 articles
      • 2005 articles
      • 2004 articles
      • 2003 articles
      • 2002 articles
      • 2001 articles
      • 2000 articles
  • Articles
    • GM Myth Makers
    • GM Reports
    • How donations will help us
    • GM Quotes
    • GM Myths
    • Non-GM successes
    • GM Firms
      • Monsanto: a history
      • Monsanto: resources
      • Bayer: a history
      • Bayer: resources
  • Videos
    • Index of speakers
    • Glyphosate Videos
    • Latest Videos
    • Must see videos
    • Health Effects
    • Cornell videos
    • Agriculture videos
    • Labeling videos
    • Animals videos
    • Corporations videos
    • Corporate takeover videos
    • Contamination videos
    • Latin America videos
    • India videos
    • Asia videos
    • Food safety videos
    • Songs videos
    • Protests videos
    • Biofuel myths videos
    • Index of GM crops and foods
  • Contact
  • About
  • Donations
SUBSCRIBE TO REVIEWS

GMWatch Facebook cornfield banner

SCIENCE SUPPORTS REGULATION OF GENE EDITING

Plant tissue cultures

GENE EDITING: UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RISKS

Damaged DNA on fire

GENE-EDITED CROPS & FOODS

Help stop the new threat

GM Fed pig

News Menu

  • Latest News
  • News Reviews
  • Archive
  • Languages

Please support GMWatch

Donations

You can donate via Paypal or credit/debit card.

Some of you have opted to give a regular donation. This is greatly appreciated as it helps place us on a more stable financial basis. Thank you for your support!

2012 articles

GM cassava study retracted over "missing" data

  • Print
  • Email
Details
Published: 01 October 2012
Created: 01 October 2012
Last Updated: 22 October 2012
Twitter

EXTRACT: Ortiz, a breeder of several crops including cassava, had been sceptical when SciDev.Net asked him for an independent comment about this study in 2011, saying that the genetic material of wild and native cassava varieties should be further studied for cassava biofortification, instead of using genetic modification.
–-
–-
GM cassava study retracted over 'missing' data
Zoraida Portillo
SciDev.Net, 26 September 2012
http://www.scidev.net/en/agriculture-and-environment/gm-crops/news/gm-cassava-study-retracted-over-missing-data.html

[Lima] A study that last year claimed to have found a way to boost the protein content of a staple crop rich in energy but poor in protein has been retracted after researchers failed to find any supporting data to back up its claims.

The study, published in PLoS ONE in January 2011, has been cited at least five times.

The authors claimed to have created a genetically modified (GM) cassava crop that expressed a gene called zeolin, thereby increasing the protein content by 12.5 per cent and potentially allowing the plant to become "capable of supplying inexpensive, plant-based proteins for food, feed and industrial applications".

But the study was retracted this month after the authors were unable to find the zeolin gene in plants from subsequent studies. The retraction notice says that "an institutional investigation revealed that significant amounts of data and supporting documentation that were claimed to be produced by the first author could not be found" and "the validity of the results could not be verified".

Cassava is a staple food in many developing countries, but its nutritional content especially in protein and micronutrients is low, something that the researchers from the Laboratory for Tropical Agricultural Biotechnology at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in the United States and Mayaguez University in Puerto Rico said they were on the verge of overcoming with the GM cassava.

The lead author of the article, Mohammad Abhary, left the Danforth Center in the middle of 2011, and the corresponding author Claude Fauquetdid not respond to SciDev.Net's requests for comment.

In a statement to Retraction Watch blog, Danforth president James Carrington, admitted that questions arose shortly after the paper was published, when the researchers tried to extend the findings.

Carrington said a more systematic analysis "indicated that the materials published in the paper were not as described, and that the materials that were described could not be found".

Rodomiro Ortiz, professor of plant breeding and biotechnology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, told SciDev.Net that the case confirms the need not only for rigor in initial research, but for experiments to be repeated before publication.

"It's unfortunate to come to this situation but [retraction] was necessary to keep the ethical values of scientific research," he added.

Ortiz, a breeder of several crops including cassava, had been sceptical when SciDev.Net asked him for an independent comment about this study in 2011, saying that the genetic material of wild and native cassava varieties should be further studied for cassava biofortification, instead of using genetic modification.
***
Comment by Nagib Nassar, Universidade Brasilia, Brasil ( Brazil )
1 October 2012 [changes made to spelling etc. to clarify English] 
Wild Manihot species as a safe source of protein should have been exploited before looking to another unsafe source in virus or bacteria and trying to transfer it by molecular means. So much successful work has been done on this subject by this author and his associates at the Universidade de Brasilia, through very low expense projects supported by the Brazilian National Council of Research Development- CNPq, Brasilia and the Canadian International Research Development Center – IDRC. Not only protein rich hybrids were obtained, but essential amino acids which do not occur in common cassava were reached. See for example this article published some five years ago in Genetics and Molecular Research: Amino acid profile in cassava and its interspecific hybrid by Nagib M.A. Nassar1 and M.V. Sousa2 
1Departamento de Genética e Morfologia, 2Departamento de Biologia Celular, 
Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brasil 
Corresponding author: Nagib M.A. Nassar 
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Genet. Mol. Res. 6 (2): 292-297 (2007) 
The first publication on transferring high protein content from the wild was in 1982 (thirty years ago) by Nassar and Dorea in Turrialba as follows: Protein content of cassava cultivars and its hybrid with wild Manihot species
NMA Nassar, JG Dorea – Turrialba, 1982. The case of Wild Cassava rich in protein was documented in several publications in the decade 1970 by Nassar and co workers. For example publication in the leading Suisse Journal Experientia in 1977 as follows : NASSAR, NM A. and COSTA, C. 1977. Tuber formation and protein content in some wild
Manihot species native of Central Brazil. Experientia (Basel) 33: I304- I305

  • Prev
  • Next

Menu

Home

News

News Archive

News Reviews

Videos

Articles

GM Myth Makers

GM Reports

GM Myths

GM Quotes

How Donations Will Help Us

Contacts

Contact Us

About

Facebook

Twitter

RSS

Content 1999 - 2021 GMWatch.
Web Development By SCS Web Design