Food Safety Issues and Challenges of GM Crops

Abstract According to the United Nations, the world population is expected to reach the 9th billion mark by 2050. Housing, feeding, and clothing to the newly added population will be a great challenge. Various international agencies have issued appeals to increase world food production. To meet this challenge, scientists are continuously developing new technologies for the improvement of field crops. For example, the Green Revolution developed in the 1960s significantly increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world. The introduction of GM crops in 1995 marked the beginning of another revolution known as the “Gene Revolution” for the improvement of agricultural productivity to effectively address food security issues. The success of this technology can be estimated from the fact that the area under GM crops is steadily increasing. In the year 2018, GM crops were grown on ~192 million hectares worldwide, which represents a 113-fold increase since their commercialization. Despite the significant success, GM crops have become highly controversial in terms of their biosafety and transgene outflow via pollen from them to weedy relatives. In this chapter, we will discuss the potential of GM crops to address the global food security issue as well as the concerns and risks associated with GM crops, and how they can be addressed to increase their acceptance.