GMW: Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the U.S.

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GMW: Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the U.S.

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:38:27 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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Predictable dismissive spin from New Scientist's most pro-GM journalist

on " the first time a GM plant has escaped into the wild in the US. "

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Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the U.S.

Andy Coghlan

From issue 2564 of New Scientist magazine, 09 August 2006, page 9

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125643.100-escaped-golfcourse-grass-free\

s-gene-genie-in-the-us.html

 

A nondescript grass discovered in the Oregon countryside is hardly an

alien invasion. Yet the plant - a genetically modified form of a grass

commonly grown on golf courses - is worrying the US Department of

Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental

impact assessment of a GM plant.

 

It is the first time a GM plant has escaped into the wild in the US,

and it has managed it before securing USDA approval. The plant, creeping

bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera), carries a bacterial gene that makes

it immune to the potent herbicide glyphosate, better known as Roundup.

The manufacturer, The Scotts Company, Marysville, Ohio, is hoping the

grass will provide a turf that makes it easier for golf course owners to

manage their fairways and greens by letting them kill competing weedy

grasses with glyphosate.

 

Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection Agency's

labs in Corvallis, Oregon, identified nine escapees out of 20,400

plants of various grass varieties sampled within a 4.8-kilometre

radius of

the site where the bentgrass is being cultivated, the most distant 3.8

kilometres away. The team showed that the GM grass has spread both by

pollinating non-GM plants to form hybrids, and by seed movement.

 

Bentgrass is a perennial, so once out there it regrows year after year,

whereas most GM crops - mainly soybeans, maize and canola (oilseed

rape) - are annuals, unable to reproduce, harvested each year and

replaced

with an entirely new crop the next. Another worry is that unlike the

other GM crops, bentgrass has many relatives in the US with which it can

cross-breed or hybridise, potentially passing on the

glyphosate-resistance gene to other species - with unpredictable results.

 

" It's a cautionary tale of what could happen with other GM plants that

could be of greater concern, " says Reichman. " I suspect that more

examples of this will show up. " His report will appear in the October

issue

of Molecular Ecology.

 

If bentgrass is approved by the USDA, it could prove a hit with the

thousands of golf course managers throughout the US, making it easy for

the crop to spread far and wide. If it reaches environmentally sensitive

wildernesses or establishes itself by waterways, removing it could

require weedkillers far more harmful than the relatively benign

glyphosate.

 

" It's definitely a new set of variables we've not had to deal with in

previous GM crops, " says Eric Baack of Indiana University in

Bloomington, who comments on Reichman's findings in Current Biology

(vol 16, p

R1). Still, it isn't clear whether the gene would have much impact in the

wild. " You wouldn't expect the weedkiller-resistance gene to be a

particular advantage in the wild, " says Baack. Also, the USDA doesn't

class

conventional bentgrass as a " noxious " weed.

 

There is however the possibility of litigation if the GM grass

contaminates other elite grass strains under cultivation. Some 70 per

cent of

the US's commercial grass seed is grown in Oregon, so there is the

potential for accidental adulteration.

 

The USDA is not taking any chances. " This is a perennial, and has wild

and weedy relatives, and it's something we think we need to know the

environmental impact of before it's deregulated, " says a spokeswoman for

the USDA's Biotechnology Regulatory Services in Riverdale, Maryland.

" There's no current set date for when [the environmental impact

assessment] will be finished, " she says.

 

Whether the US public takes any notice of the furore is another

question entirely. " I don't think people will worry about lawns and golf

courses if they've not shown any worries already about GM food, " says

Baack.

 

 

 

 

 

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