Genetically altered trees have enormous economic potential as they live long and have a high biological productivity, but its ecological and environmental implications are yet unclear, experts have said. In an orchard in Canada, genetically altered fruit trees kill insects on contact without pesticide sprays. Soon they will bear apples whose crispy white flesh won't turn brown even hours after being cut. In Israel, popular trees have been made to grow so fast that they could eliminate the need to log old growth forests, while gobbling enough carbon dioxide to slow global warming.

These and other equally attractive trees, said the paper, are growing on scores of test plots around the world, part of a little noted biotech revolution in forestry that experts predict will hit its commercial stride in the next five years. Building on a decade of practice in crops like soyabeans and cotton, researchers at universities and at a few biotechnology companies have been perfecting the art of injecting novel genes into the cells of trees.

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Now, scientists say, they are poised to harness the enormous economic potential of the biggest, longest-lived and most biologically productive plants on earth.

In the past decade, about 130 outdoor varieties of genetically modified trees have got the go-ahead from the US agriculture department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

Report: Zeenext Bureau