A Pentagon scientific agency has been widely criticized for altering the hereditary nature of some viruses so that they pass through insects to crops to protect them from disasters and wars.
The DARPA launched the program in 2016 to ensure food security in the event of environmental disasters or outbreaks of bacteriological warfare and the spread of serious diseases.
To avoid these horrific scenarios as a matter of course, US Agency scientists have recently made genetic modifications to viruses that creep into crops through insects.
The "Associated insects" project allows the transmission of genetically modified viruses to insects. When this process is carried out, the insect can make crops more resistant to damage during disasters.
If the drought strikes an maize field or becomes vulnerable to agricultural disease, for example, these insects, which are controlled by modified viruses, can slow the growth rate of the plant or make it more resistant to germs.
The project has been criticized by scientists led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biology, Richard Guy, and warned that these techniques are significant, even if promising some benefits.
In the view of the American academic, this technology has very limited capacity to protect US agricultural crops if any disaster.
The researchers attributed their fears to the possibility of using this technology in the development of deadly biological weapons, which may fall into the hands of terrorists, rather than restricting the use of this method in the field of agriculture only.
