By 2050, the world's population is projected to rise to 9 billion from just over 7 billion currently. Proponents of generally modified foods say they are safe and can boost harvests even in bad conditions by protecting against pests, weeds and drought . This, they argue will be essential to meeting the needs of a booming population in decades to come and avoiding starvation . However, Doug Gurian - Sherman, senior scientist for the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said genetic engineering for insect resistance has provided only a modest increase in yields since the 1990s and drought-resistant strains have only modestly reduced losses from drought. Moreover, he said conventional crossbreeding or cross - pollinating of different varieties for desirable traits, along with improved farming, is getting better results, boosting yields at a lower cost . In fact, much of the food Americans eat has been genetically modified by those conventional methods over thousands of years, before genetic engineering came into practice . Overall genetic engineering does not get nearly the bang for the buck as conventional breeding and improve agricultural [ 判断题 ] Para . 2 mentions that insect-resistant genetically modified food has only showed a fairly small increase in production.
By 2050, the world's population is projected to rise to 9 billion from just over 7 billion currently. Proponents of generally modified foods say they are safe and can boost harvests even in bad conditions by protecting against pests, weeds and drought . This, they argue will be essential to meeting the needs of a booming population in decades to come and avoiding starvation .
However, Doug Gurian - Sherman, senior scientist for the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said genetic engineering for insect resistance has provided only a modest increase in yields since the 1990s and drought-resistant strains have only modestly reduced losses from drought.
Moreover, he said conventional crossbreeding or cross - pollinating of different varieties for desirable traits, along with improved farming, is getting better results, boosting yields at a lower cost . In fact, much of the food Americans eat has been genetically modified by those conventional methods over thousands of years, before genetic engineering came into practice .
Overall genetic engineering does not get nearly the bang for the buck as conventional breeding and improve agricultural
[ 判断题 ] Para . 2 mentions that insect-resistant genetically modified food has only showed a fairly small increase in production.
题目解答
答案
句意：第2段提到抗虫转基因食品的产量只有相当小的增长。根据第二段“然而，一个倡导组织，相关科学家联盟负责食品和环境项目的高级科学家道格 · 古里安-谢尔曼(Doug Gurian-Sherman)表示，自上世纪90年代以来，抗虫基因工程只提供了适度的产量增长，抗旱品种也只是适度减少了干旱造成的损失。”可知是“适度的产量增长”而不是“相当小的增长。”题干说法错误，答案：F。
解析
题干要求判断第2段是否提到抗虫转基因食品的产量只有相当小的增长。我们需要仔细阅读第2段，找到相关的信息。
步骤 2：分析第2段
第2段提到：“然而，一个倡导组织，相关科学家联盟负责食品和环境项目的高级科学家道格 · 古里安-谢尔曼(Doug Gurian-Sherman)表示，自上世纪90年代以来，抗虫基因工程只提供了适度的产量增长，抗旱品种也只是适度减少了干旱造成的损失。”
这里提到的是“适度的产量增长”，而不是“相当小的增长”。
步骤 3：得出结论
根据第2段的内容，抗虫转基因食品的产量增长是“适度的”，而不是“相当小的”。因此，题干的说法是错误的。