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Transgenic trees face rocky path from farm to forest

Report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine highlights thorny issues with releasing engineered trees into the wild.
  1. Heidi Ledford
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For more than three decades, US farmers have been growing genetically engineered crops. Now researchers are pushing to move the technology from farm to forest by releasing transgenic trees — engineered to carry genes that would make them resistant to pests — into the wild.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00072-6

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 18 April 2019: This story originally said that regulators in Brazil came close to approving a transgenic eucalyptus tree in 2014. In fact, they approved the tree in 2015.

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