Glossary Plant Breeding

Terminator Technology. A technology that ensures that the plants grown from
genetically engineered seeds will produce only sterile seeds of their own. This is
achieved by selectively programming a plant’s DNA to kill its own embryo. That the
patent that was initially granted to Delta and Pine Land Company (DPL), which was
later on owned by Monsanto, is innocuously titled “Control of Plant Gene
Expression”. However, it has been globally derided as the Terminator Technology.
[The term has actually been coined by Rural Advancement Foundation International
(RAFI), which has been spearheading an international campaign against it]. TT is
biotechnology at its sophisticated best. It uses three constructs of DNA that ensure
that the transgenic plants become terminators that abort their own embryos. The three
constructs are something akin to promotor, inducer and repressor. The technology has
several drawbacks: (1) it breaks plant-to-seed-to-plant to seed cycle, the cycle that
supports most life on the earth, (2) it gives multinational companies an unprecedented
and extremely dangerous capacity to control world’s food supply, (3) the terminator
gene could be transmitted to other cultivated species for some extent of outcrossing
takes place in almost all species, (4) the planting of such strains owing to their
seeming superiority may wipe out biodiversity, (5) the monoculture of such strains
will enhance their vulnerability to insect pests, (6) the ecologists fear that the use of
three gene constructs will adversely affect soil microflora and fauna, (7) the
nutritional aspects of such seeds are also likely to be affected, and (8) the fallout of
the technology will directly affect 90% of the farmers who operate in the traditional
style. Because of these and other limitations, the technology has been banned.
Tertiary Gene Pool. Genetic resources of a crop species that includes distantly-related
wild species compared to secondary gene pool. Hybrids tend to be sterile or lethal due
to abnormality in development of embryo. Successful hybrid embryos can be
produced through techniques of embryo culture, tissue culture and chromosome
doubling or bridge species.
Tertiary Structure (of protein). The folding or coiling of the secondary structure to form
a globular molecule.
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