William Powell

Q: what are some problems with trying to genetically engineer trees

Answered By William Powell - Jul 06, 2015

A: First, there are many benefits to using genetic engineering tools compared to breeding tools, mainly from the fact that we are making much smaller changes to the tree and we know more about these changes.  But you asked about problems.  The first problem is developing an efficient transformation technique.  Each tree species is different and requires optimization of techniques.  It took 16 years to develop the techniques for American chestnut, but now that we have them in hand, we can genetically engineer a tree in less than a year, far quicker than breeding.  So when [...]

Answered By William Powell - Jul 06, 2015

A: First, there are many benefits to using genetic engineering tools compared to breeding tools, mainly from the fact that we are making much smaller changes to the tree and we know more about these changes.  But you asked about problems.  The first problem is developing an efficient transformation technique.  Each tree species is different and requires optimization of techniques.  It took 16 years to develop the techniques for American chestnut, but now that we have them in hand, we can genetically engineer a tree in less than a year, far quicker than breeding.  So when [...]

GMOs Globally Modern Agriculture

Q: what are some problems with trying to genetically engineer trees

Answered By William Powell - Jul 06, 2015

A: First, there are many benefits to using genetic engineering tools compared to breeding tools, mainly from the fact that we are making much smaller changes to the tree and we know more about these changes.  But you asked about problems.  The first problem is developing an efficient transformation technique.  Each tree species is different and requires optimization of techniques.  It took 16 years to develop the techniques for American chestnut, but now that we have them in hand, we can genetically engineer a tree in less than a year, far quicker than breeding.  So when [...]

Answered By William Powell - Jul 06, 2015

A: First, there are many benefits to using genetic engineering tools compared to breeding tools, mainly from the fact that we are making much smaller changes to the tree and we know more about these changes.  But you asked about problems.  The first problem is developing an efficient transformation technique.  Each tree species is different and requires optimization of techniques.  It took 16 years to develop the techniques for American chestnut, but now that we have them in hand, we can genetically engineer a tree in less than a year, far quicker than breeding.  So when [...]

GMOs Globally Modern Agriculture

Q: are there any trees that have been genetically modified to create termite and rot resistant timber? I think that could not only help consumers but also preserve forests because only plantationed trees would be considered valuable as building products.

Answered By William Powell - Sep 23, 2015

A: Interesting question. To my knowledge nobody is specifically developing a termite and rot resistant timber by using genetic engineering. But that doesn’t mean some researchers at a company or a university are not looking into this possibility, just that I haven’t seen any publications to date. On an aside, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) has very high termite and rot resistance. We lost the American chestnut as a timber tree due to a blight caused by an exotic pathogen introduced into our forest over a century ago. But genetic engineering has rece [...]

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