Researchers Assessing Safety and Benefits of GM Cotton in Burkina Faso

Burkinabe Agronomist Discusses Field Trials in New Online Video

St. Louis, MO -- In a new online video and podcast appear today, Dr. Ouola Traoré, an agriculturalist and arch of the affection affairs at the Institute for the Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA), discusses the acreage trials and evaluations that accept been conducted back 2003 to appraise if transgenic affection crops accommodate advantages to farmers in Burkina Faso.

It’s accurate that we accept some varieties that are productive, but we aswell accept to use a lot of pesticides aboriginal to amusement the seed, again to assure the plants until they are around mature At present, the amount of insecticide analysis agency that generally we can’t be aggressive internationally. The abstracts are advised – with transgenic affection – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some added addition to aggressive the assorted pests chemically I’m absorbed in giving the best accessible advice to the producer. And it’s not in the absorption of others, but in my own absorption – as a scientist It’s in the absorption of the country, in the absorption of the producers – because I myself am the son of a ambassador – to back to them the appropriate information. Burkina Faso in Western Africa is one of the atomic countries in the apple with 90 percent of the citizenry affianced in affluence agriculture. Where possible, farmers are bearing affection as a banknote crop, yet are affected to common aridity and insect infestations.

“It’s accurate that we accept some varieties that are productive, but we aswell accept to use a lot of pesticides aboriginal to amusement the seed, again to assure the plants until they are around mature,” explains Dr. Traoré. “At present, the amount of insecticide analysis agency that generally we can’t be aggressive internationally.”

GM insect-protected affection crops accommodate a protein from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that protects the plants from specific lepidopteron insect pests.

“The abstracts are advised – with transgenic affection – to see what the advantages are. … It’s to see if there is some added addition to aggressive the assorted pests chemically,” continues Dr. Traoré.

Once accustomed for bartering use, Burkinabe farmers are accepted to account from beneath labor, beneath pesticide spraying and added income. According to a contempo address from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the acceptance of genetically adapted crops a allotment of resource-poor farmers in added countries is consistent in aberrant allowances that are accidental to the Millennium Development Goals of abbreviation abjection by 50 percent by 2015.

In accession to assessing the agronomic characteristics and capability of GM cotton, advisers at INERA are evaluating the appulse of the technology on the ambiance and the agreement and assurance of the affection berry and oil byproducts acclimated for abominable augment and animal consumption.

“I’m absorbed in giving the best accessible advice to the producer. And it’s not in the absorption of others, but in my own absorption – as a scientist,” says Dr. Traoré. “It’s in the absorption of the country, in the absorption of the producers – because I myself am the son of a ambassador – to back to them the appropriate information.”

This new video can be viewed, downloaded or anchored into addition Web website from the Conversations about Plant Biotechnology Web site. In addition, visitors to the Web website can appearance videos with farmers about the charge for GM crops in Burkina Faso, as able-bodied as with all-around experts who ambition greater acceptance to GM technology in developing countries to account affluence farming.

The Conversations about Plant Biotechnology is advised to accord a articulation and a face to the farmers and families who abound GM crops and the experts who analysis and abstraction the benefits of biotechnology in agriculture. The Web website contains added than 70 two- to three-minute, acutely candid, aboveboard and acute video segments with the humans who apperceive the technology best. The Web website is hosted by Monsanto Company — a arch all-around provider of technology-based solutions and agronomical articles that advance acreage abundance and aliment quality.

Contact:
Ranjana Smetacek
314-694-2642

General Motors and Weekly Reader Release Classroom Curriculum on Energy and Environment Issues: New Activities Examine 100 Years of Evolving Technology

General Motors and Weekly Reader are distributing an adapted adaptation of their average academy classroom curriculum, "The Energy Highway - Solutions Ahead," which aims to advice acceptance accept the activity challenges adverse association today and some of the abeyant solutions to those challenges. To admire GM's 100th anniversary, this year's class aswell appearance a new affiche admit that explores noteworthy technologies of the endure aeon as able-bodied as a attending at approaching automotive technologies.

Detroit, MI -- General Motors and Weekly Reader are distributing an adapted adaptation of their average academy classroom curriculum, "The Energy Highway - Solutions Ahead," which aims to advice acceptance accept the activity challenges adverse association today and some of the abeyant solutions to those challenges. To admire GM's 100th anniversary, this year's class aswell appearance a new affiche admit that explores noteworthy technologies of the endure aeon as able-bodied as a attending at approaching automotive technologies. The class packet aswell includes a teacher's adviser with reproducible apprentice activities, an added classroom bank poster, and advisory student/parent booklets. Online amateur for acceptance are aswell accessible at gm.com/education.

"As all-around activity demands abide to increase, GM is committed to accomplishing its allotment to action solutions by developing cars that can be powered by abounding altered activity sources including E85 ethanol, diesel, electricity and hydrogen," said Elizabeth A. Lowery, GM carnality president, Environment, Energy and Safety Policy. "Young humans today accept an befalling to be allotment of the movement that develops solutions to these activity issues, and GM's charge to apprenticeship in the areas of math, science and technology is aimed at auspicious them to be a allotment of that effort."

Interest in ecology apprenticeship is growing. A July 30, 2008, USA Today article, "Environmental Education Gets a Green Light," appear that agents are amalgam acquaint on the ambiance into their circadian apprenticeship plan. However, abounding agents are not able with the accoutrement all-important to bigger advise ecology apprenticeship through textbooks. The Environmental Literacy Council acclaimed in its 2007 address blue-blooded "Energy Literacy: Are Middle School Textbooks 'Making the Grade'?" that a lot of textbooks were advised as just "adequate" in energy-related education, hence, the charge for added materials.

"We partnered with General Motors to brainwash and acquaint acceptance on must-know activity capacity like addition ammunition sources and the appulse of activity acceptance on the environment," said Mary Ellen McLaughlin, publisher, Weekly Reader Custom Publishing. "Today's average academy acceptance are the activity consumers of the future. What they apprentice now can accept a absolute aftereffect on the ambiance in the years to come."

The Energy Highway: Solutions Ahead class was created and well-received in its barrage year (2007-08). Close to two-thirds of agents that acclimated the affairs appear that their acceptance bigger accepted the issues and challenges surrounding activity and were absolutely added abreast about the abeyant of application assorted and renewable activity resources.

GM and Weekly Reader accept partnered in the accomplished on added classroom class focused on assorted ambiance and activity capacity including ammunition cells, hydrogen, and E85 ethanol. The average academy science class amalgamation on E8 5 booze won a 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers. These added assets can be begin at gm.com/education.

General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), the world's better automaker, has been the anniversary all-around industry sales baton for 77 years. Founded in 1908, GM today employs about 266,000 humans about the world. With all-around address in Detroit, GM articles its cars and trucks in 35 countries. In 2007, about 9.37 actor GM cars and trucks were awash globally beneath the afterward brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall and Wuling. GM's OnStar accessory is the industry baton in car safety, aegis and advice services. More advice on GM can be begin at www.gm.com.

Weekly Reader Custom Publishing is the accustomed baton in developing different educational programs sponsored by corporations, nonprofit associations and government agencies.

Weekly Reader Publishing Group, founded in 1902, is a baton in educational publishing. Weekly Reader® publishes 15 magazines and a array of added added articles that reinforce curriculum, advice agents accommodated standards, and appoint students. Every one of the magazines has won awards for arete in educational journalism. Weekly Reader Publishing Group is allotment of the Reader's Digest Association, Inc.