Scientists create new crop of genetically modified crops

[nosmokes]

RR is going in the toilet so now w have the newest generation here to produce superweeds. great.
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original-grist

Scientists create new crop of genetically modified crops

Posted by Maywa Montenegro at 4:14 PM on 31 May 2007



If you've ever colored Easter eggs -- I mean the old-fashioned way, with food-coloring, not with those plastic wraparounds -- then you know that when you mess up, you have two options: rinse them off with some white vinegar and start over, or forge ahead, layer even more color on top, and hope that something presentable emerges.

Okay, so that metaphor's a bit of a stretch, but that's what came to mind when I read, earlier this week, that scientists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, have engineered a new category of transgenic crops. The new plants -- which include broad-leafed greens such as soybeans, tomatoes, and tobacco -- harbor a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to an herbicide called dicamba.

"But we have Roundup!" you cry. "Why do we need anything else?" Well, because Roundup (active ingredient: a chemical called glyphosate) isn't working as flawlessly as it used to. According to the story in Science (sorry, subscription only), 24 percent of farmers in the northern Midwest and 29 percent in the South say they have glycophate-resistant (GR) weeds. Crop scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia report GR grasses popping up too.

Which is hardly a surprise when you consider the loads of the chemical we've dumped on our fields in the past few decades. In 1995, U.S. farmers used 4.5 million kilograms of glyphosate; today they use 10 times that amount. And glyphosate-resistant crops (better known as "Roundup Ready"), first engineered by Monsanto in 1986, now dominate the market. Today, more than 90 percent of soybeans and 60 percent of the corn are glyphosate resistant. With many farmers using glyphosate as their sole herbicide, we've essentially ensured that mavericks would eventually sprout. "The selective pressure for weeds to develop resistance has been huge," Stephen Duke, a plant physiologist at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service told Science.
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complete article including links to other sources here

[texastoast]

1. It would be helpful if we learned

that most "weeds" are good to eat and are our friends. We should eat them during the season they appear. That's the way God planned it.

But I guess that doesn't work for those folks who go ahead and buy their fruit and veggies out of the natural season. Just FYI, Chile allows many more pesticides to be used that have been outlawed in the U.S. And we could talk about China . . .

[nosmokes]

6. eat weeds?!?! you really must be from texas! i reckon y'all know all

about mustard greens and dandelion greens and collards too, huh? :9 :hi:

[ItNerd4life]

2. Are you saying Evolutilion isn't just a theory?

How can this be, I thought creationism meant evolution doesn't exist. What will Republican farmers do now?

I'm hopelessly confused.

[BlooInBloo]

3. (shrug) People have been genetically modifying crops for 1000s of years.

[nosmokes]

5. No we haven't. selective breeding is not

genetic manipulation. it's not trans-species breeding. please do not confuse the two.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Sure it is.

When you take pollen from plant "a" and use it pollinate the ovary of plant "b" then genetic manipulation is exactly what you're doing.

[bettyellen]

11. it's not even close to damaging the DNA, and/ or inserting human or animal genes, but nice try.....

pollenation is a natural process, creating intentional mutants? not even close.

[Jed Dilligan]

4. Scary stuff, but

"crop... of crops"? The writer could have tried a little harder, I think.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. Sounds good.

With more pesticide resistant crops, more farmers will be able to rotate their crops/pesticide use to avoid more pesticide resistance.

[Odin2005]

9. Why don't we just genetically modify them to make them pest-resistant?

I'm a biotechnology major so it is something I've thought of for a while. Is there any way to genetically modify crops to make them pest-resistant while at the same time being edible? It would be a hell of a lot better for the environment.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. You mean make crop seeds compete with already grown weeds?

I guess it'd be possibly, but from a tactical stand point it's much easier to confer glyphosate resistance. It's just a single enzyme, one with glyphosate N-acetyltransferase activity.

In order to make them compete with weeds, you've got to make them tougher than the actual weeds, and since weeds are already tough and already invasive species, that seems to me to be a much larger environmental issue.

[nosmokes]

12. it's called Bt corn and Bt cotton and the results are deadly, at least to

foraging sheep and goats plus a few cattle in india. and the deaths were fairly horrific. now there is new evidence that Bt crops play havoc with the natural microbial action in the soil depleting it at a much greater rate than regular crops. the problem is that unlike applying Bt topically, when the gene is inserted into the plants genome there is no way to control how much Bt the plant produces and some plants apparently go into hyper productivity mode.

this is a prime example of one of the reasons i am against GMOs. they may very well be the best thing since sliced bread, but there have not been anywhere near the exhaustive long term studies done on them and their effects on the environment much less on animal and human health for them to have been released into the food cycle so quickly, especially since there is no need for them. in twenty or thirty years maybe i'll be convinced, and then maybe we'll have the laws on the books to protect farmers and the poor from corporate predators that want to patentlife forms and make it illegal for peasant farmers to save seeds and such. but until then i'll fight the bio-techs and promote organic/bio-intensive with everything i can muster.