A Survey of 'GM' Technologies Appropriate to Tobacco Production for its Traditional Markets

The flue-cured and burley tobacco industries have thus far relied solely on the genetics of the tobacco plant itself for enhancement of yields, disease resistance, leaf quality and other traits. Meanwhile, over the last 20 years the tobacco plant has been widely used as a convenient research species for developing 'transgenic' ('GM', genetically modified) strategies for crop improvement, resulting in the demonstration of a wide range of new performance and input traits in tobacco. With the considerable benefits that GM technology has brought to other crops, there is increasing interest in assessing the potential of those advances in traditional tobacco. Accordingly, we believe that it would be useful to provide a comprehensive survey of what GM technology can do in tobacco, and how/whether GM tobacco could be safely and securely produced in the open-field environment without compromising the production of the non-GM crop. This survey will consider only the possibilities for using GM technology in production of traditional tobacco, rather than projected 'new uses' for the plant (as that topic has been extensively researched and described elsewhere). We anticipate that this information will be valuable to growers and their organizations as a base of knowledge on the status of GM technologies that might be used in modifying traditional burley and flue-cured varieties.