Side Event
Terminator 2.0 - A New Generation of GURTs
Organizer
ETC Group and EcoNexus
Date and Time
1 January 0001 0:0 - 0:0
Despite the fact that Parties re-affirmed and strengthened the CBD’s de facto moratorium on GURTs in 2006, public and private sector researchers are expanding and refining research on a new generation of “suicide seed” technologies. Current research is being undertaken for the purpose of biological containment – to prevent transgenes in GM plants from spreading. The same research is simultaneously advancing genetic seed sterilization. Researchers are now developing “reversible transgenic sterility” – GURTs that will allow the farmer or breeder to restore the seed’s fertility by applying an external chemical inducer. New GURT technologies are designed to excise transgenes from a GM plant at a specific time in the plant’s development, or to kill a plant with “conditionally lethal” genes. This side-event will examine research on GURT technologies that are being developed for biocontainment of GM crops and trees. Will the new generation of Terminator technologies function for the purpose of biocontainment? What impact on biological diversity, smallholder farmers and the CBD’s programme of work on GURTs?