GM-native hybridization 'inevitable'

[Guest guest]

My take has pretty much been that it was planned to go something like this:

 

" These crops pose no threat to health or other crops " . Wow, your crops got cross

polinated with mine " . " Wow, so sorry. " " Well since GM crops are everywhere it

looks like a good future for GM crops " " Thats all there is available in one form

or another, Huh? "

" Funny how that worked out huh " . and also " Organic? What organic? " Two birds

with one stone.

 

F.

 

 

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031010/05

 

October 10, 2003

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GM-native hybridization 'inevitable'Hybridization of rapeseed and native species

suggests GM crops will frequently crossbreed | By Cathy Holding

 

 

The use of genetically modified (GM) crops is a controversial issue due to the

possible contamination of wild populations of related plant species with

engineered genes by cross-pollination, or hybridization. These genes may confer

traits such as resistance to herbicides or insect damage that could alter

ecological systems in unpredictable ways, an outcome that is publicly perceived

as undesirable. Measures preventing such cross-contamination are possible, but

in order to assess their efficacy, an understanding of the level of

hybridization that occurs naturally between the related plant species is

required. In the October 10 Science, Mike Wilkinson and colleagues at the

University of Reading School of Plant Sciences report this information and set

targets for strategies to eliminate hybridization, providing information for

objective quantitative risk assessment on a national scale (Science,

DOI:10.1126/science.1088200, October 10, 2003).

 

Wilkinson et al. aimed to estimate the degree of hybridization that occurs

naturally between Brassica napus—rapeseed—and Brassica rapa, a related weed that

grows near waterways, or less frequently, in rapeseed fields in the British

Isles. The authors investigated the level of hybridization between the plant

species that grow near or with each other and those that occur by long-range,

windborne pollination. Both species are almost absent from Northern Ireland, and

the authors' sources—the database of the Botanical Society of the British Isles,

the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Countryside Survey 2000, 591 herbarium

specimens, and direct surveying—also indicated the absence of riverbank B. rapa

in Scotland. Nevertheless, across the United Kingdom, the authors estimated that

32,000 hybrids are formed annually in waterside B. rapa populations and that

17,000 hybrids are formed in the weed population.

 

“We infer that widespread, relatively frequent hybrid formation is inevitable

from male-fertile GM rapeseed in the UK. Our findings contrast with an earlier,

regional assessment of hybrid formation... The discrepancy highlights the

importance of performing risk assessment at the national scale... The

substantial numbers of predicted long-range hybrids means that physical

isolation would tend only to suppress, rather than prevent, hybrid formation,”

said the authors.

 

“The presence of hybrids is not a hazard in itself and does not imply inevitable

ecological change,” they conclude.

Links for this article

N.C. Ellstrand, “Current knowledge of gene flow in plants: implications for

transgene flow,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London:

Series B, Biological Sciences, 358:1163-1170, June 29, 2003.

[PubMed Abstract]

 

M. Wilkinson et al., “Hybridization between Brassica napus and B. rapa on a

national scale in the United Kingdom,” Science, DOI:10.1126/science.1088200,

October 10, 2003.

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.shtml

 

University of Reading School of Plant Sciences

http://www.plantsci.rdg.ac.uk/

 

Botanical Society of the British Isles

http://www.bsbi.org.uk/

 

Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Countryside Survey 2000

http://www.cs2000.org.uk/

 

 

 

 

 

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