This paper is relevant to the impact areas in the following areas:
| Crops | Soybean |
| Traits | Herbicide Tolerance, Insect Resistance |
| Countries | US |
| Regions | North America |
| Tags | coservation tillage, environmental, no-till, soybeans, US |
The next generation of biotech crops will feature additional input traits such as tolerance to more herbicides and insects, as well as more efficient use of water and nitrogen. It will also introduce valuable output traits, including:
• Improved health profiles of oils and grains,
• Modification or elimination of major allergens, and
• More efficient conversion to biofuels
Environmental benefits from biotech input traits add up quickly in pounds of herbicides and insecticides eliminated from the production system. For example:
• Herbicide-tolerant soybeans and cotton reduced U.S. herbicide usage in 2007 by 47.4 million pounds of active ingredient, and
• Insect-resistant cotton and corn varieties decreased insecticide applications that year by 8.67 million pounds of active ingredient.
There are significant long-term benefits, too. The adoption of biotech crops – especially soybeans – closely tracks the expansion of conservation tillage and no-till production. Between the introduction of Roundup Ready® soybeans in 1996 and the 2008 cropping season, the U.S. acreage of no-tilled full-season soybeans grew by nearly 70 percent.
Facilitating Conservation Farming Practices and Enhancing Environmental Sustainability with Agricultural Biotechnology (held on an external server, and so may require additional authentication details)
CropLife International fully acknowledges the source and authors of the publication as detailed above.