News that Japan has found genetically modified organisms in a shipment of Canadian flaxseed has increased concern among Canada’s flaxseed industry that additional countries may start halting imports. The GM material in the Canadian flaxseed is the same material that has been found in shipments to the European Union.

In Japan, many food manufacturers are reluctant to label GM foods for fear of a consumer backlash. Furthermore, as GM labeling is not mandatory for high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) -- a sweetener made using GM corn -- and cooking oil because GM genes do not remain in those products after processing, consumers have no way of knowing if such products were made from GM ingredients.

Imagine a do-it-yourself genetic piracy kit where you could clone genetically modified (GM) plants in your own kitchen and, if you were crazy or creative enough, set them free. Well that’s exactly what the Common Flowers / Flower Commons project has set out to do: revert flower cuttings into their genetically modified origins by transforming cuttings with basic kitchen utensils to create living flowers. For this years Ars Eletronica art festival in Austria, artists Shiho Fukuhara & Georg Tremmel used as their specimen the ”Moondust” blue carnation which was developed in 1995 by Japanese beer and whiskey brewer Suntory.

When it comes to the hue of a rose, one person’s blue is another’s pallid purple. ”Applause”, the new rose unveiled by Japanese company Suntory this week is said to have ”a bluish tinge reminiscent of the sky just after dawn”. To my eye, it’s just a wishy-washy mauve. People have claimed the blue-rose title before, with boldly named varieties such as ”Blue Moon” or ”Rhapsody in Blue”.

The new Japanese government’s position on genetically-modified food may impact future growth of GM canola crops in Australia, Greenpeace says. The anti-GM group claims the Democratic Party of Japan has said it will establish a food traceability system and has repeatedly called for more stringent labelling of genetically-engineered food.

Japanese research teams have pinpointed the genes in hardy varieties of rice that help the plants to outgrow rising paddy-field waters and fend off fungal infections. Having these genes in more vulnerable rice varieties could save billions of dollars and feed millions more people.

The two papers are ”very welcome at a time of increasingly difficult challenges to rice growing”, says Michael Jackson, a plant physiologist at the University of Bristol, UK.

Police release a swarm of robot-moths to sniff out a distant drug stash. Rescue robot-bees dodge through earthquake rubble to find survivors. These may sound like science-fiction scenarios, but they are the visions of Japanese scientists who hope to understand and then rebuild the brains of insects and programme them for specific tasks. [...] In an example of ’rewriting’ insect brain circuits, Kanzaki’s team has succeeded in genetically modifying a male silkmoth so that it reacts to light instead of odour, or to the odour of a different kind of moth.

Rice that could protect people against allergies such as hay fever has moved a stage closer to clinical trials, following a successful safety assessment in monkeys. [...] The rice is designed to block symptoms of runny noses and sneezing in people allergic to Japanese cedar pollen, who account for 20 per cent of the Japanese population. It is genetically modified to contain the seven proteins within cedar pollen that provoke the most serious allergic reactions in people.

Last month in Japan, a very special marmoset monkey was born--one who inherited from his parents not only their marmoset DNA, but also a jellyfish gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP) that makes both the animal and his parents glow green under fluorescent light. The monkey parents aren’t the first primates to fluoresce, but they are the first to pass a genetically engineered trait to their offspring. Scientists hope to use the approach to create animal models of neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s, which cannot be adequately reproduced in rodents--the typical subjects of genetic engineering.

Trading giant Marubeni Corp. said Friday it has concluded a cooperation deal with leading Brazilian agri-food company Amaggi Exportacao e Importacao for the procurement of soybeans, corn and other grains to enable stable supplies for Japan and China. [...] Amaggi owns 215,000 hectares of proprietary farmland on which it grows non-genetically modified soybeans. [...] The two companies are aiming to increase the annual volume of non-GMO soybeans and other grains like corn that they will jointly procure to 1 million tons in 2010, a volume equal to 3 percent of Japan’s annual imports of the products, Marubeni said.