Global Status of Commercialized Genetically Modified Crops in 2018 (Illustrated Excerpt Translation)
Compiled and translated by Chen Ru-wei
On August 22, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) released its annual report "Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in 2018." Since GM crops were first approved for commercial planting in 1996, the planted area has risen all the way from 1.7 million hectares to 191.7 million hectares in 2018. Compared with the global GM crop planted area of 189.8 million hectares in 2017, this was an increase of 1.9 million hectares, a growth rate of about 1%.
If calculated using the area of Taiwan, China, of 3,619,300 hectares, the global GM crop planted area in 2018 was roughly 53 times the size of Taiwan, China.
The number of countries planting GM crops was 26, two more than the 24 countries in 2017, with the additions of Indonesia and the Kingdom of Eswatini. The top 5 countries were the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and India, together accounting for about 91%.
Looking at crop types, GM soybean was planted on 95.9 million hectares, accounting for 50% of the global GM crop planted area; GM maize on 58.9 million hectares, or 30.7%; GM cotton on 24.8 million hectares, or 13%; GM canola on 11 million hectares, or 5.3%; and the remaining GM sugar beet, papaya, eggplant, alfalfa, summer squash, potato, apple and sugarcane accounted for about 1%. (For 2014 to 2018 data, see: https://wp.me/p5NVQR-cf5)
In terms of GM traits, they fall into three categories: "herbicide tolerance," "insect resistance" and "stacked (multiple resistances)," accounting for 46%, 12% and 42% respectively. It is worth noting that, starting from the 2014 data, the proportion of purely insect-resistant crops has not changed much, but the proportion of GM crops with the stacked trait of both "herbicide tolerance and insect resistance" has risen year by year, while the proportion of crops with only herbicide tolerance has gradually declined. (For 2014 to 2018 data, see: https://wp.me/p5NVQR-cfe)
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