ETHICS, LEGAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES
Is anyone really okay with genetic engineering anything? The simple answer is no. Some people are not okay with the idea of gentetic engineering for the foods and animals they eat. This causes a social issue due to the beliefs of people and where they stand for science. The ethical reasoning for MAS really contributes to the main issues of MAS breeding methods. Along with science issues comes actual issues that interfere with MAS.
MAS may be the new and improved breeding method for plant and animals just by taking a desired trait from one organisim and putting it into another, but it has issues that follow along with it. MAS requires studies of the spefic trait in order to correctly locate the marker. Qualitive trait loci (QTL) mapping is a very serious process in MAS. QTL is very important because when scientists work with complex traits its important to get the accuracy right to the genetic marker that contains it. With the traits being more complex, the QTL mapping is far more difficult to get the correct marker in the breeding. Environment is another huge part of the QTL mapping, the QTL mapping brings up traits used in different environments so those traits may not work well with a different habitat.
Money and cost is a great effect on MAS. All the expensive machines used to find QTL mapping, molecular markers, and molecular genotyping is adding up. This breeding process is beneficial to the MAS plants and animals but just rockets up the cost, making it rare and unobtainible than most plant and animal breeding methods. It may be very successful in crops but with all the data needed to create perfectly modified crops, it makes it hard to create it again.
Ways to make MAS more effective is to try and make it more common in regular breeding methods as well as MAS. By using the genetic markers scientists can truley find any trait and marker of useful abbilities to create better plants and animals for the world. With a few changes including more research on QTL mapping and a better and reduced cost, MAS coule eventually be the most used reproduction breeding process. Theres not much really wrong with MAS but those setbacks draw issues for the future if not changed now.
Citations:
Collard, Bertrand C.Y, and David J. Mackill. "Marker-assisted Selection: An Approach for Precision Plant Breeding in the Twenty-first Century." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The Royal Society, n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.
"Result Filters." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Aug. 2008. Web. 13 Mar. 2016.