GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Large-scale use of genetically modified (GM) crops has raised numerous controversies on the sustainability of the crops to the environment in the long run. In this scientific work, the authors review the environmental concerns of GM crops, in terms of biodiversity, non-target organisms, the condition between herbicide resistance and dynamics, and landscape impacts. After the PRISMA, we located the 166 peer-reviewed articles in Web of science, Scopus and PubMed which were field-based. Of these 112 were suitable in meta-analysis. There is quantitative synthesis that Bt insect-resistant crops have no or moderately positive impacts of helpful arthropods relative to conventional systems that depend on the use of insecticides, primarily due to the reduction in the use of unselective insecticides. The impacts are however largely neutral in comparison to the non-Bt systems that are not treated. Instead, herbicide-tolerant (HT) agricultural systems have linear decreases in the population of weeds and accelerated the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds particularly when mono-culture is practiced in permanent and when herbicide is used repeatedly. In literature, it has been established that the indirect management (i.e. making crop rotations easier, making landscape easier, excessive reliance on chemicals, etc.) has a more significant mediating effect on the loss of biodiversity than the actual transgenic properties. The findings indicate how the long-term landscape observation and the agroecological management practices can contribute to the realization of sustainability in the integration of GM technology in the agroecosystems.