GM Crops Create Herbicide-resistant "Superweed"

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article GM crops under test in the UK have cross pollinated to weeds, giving them the same resistance to herbicide as the GM crops. The article also mentions that this has been reported as occurring in Canada, which like the US is well past the test stage and allows widespread use of GM crops. What's worse, in Canada crop rotation has conferred multi-herbicide resistance to some of the weeds!"

Comments

Cross polination is a myth

[jurt1235]

Two different species are geneticaly incompatible to produce a viable offspring. In a rare case two closely related species are capable to creating offspring which is usually not able to reproduce.
Just resistance because of stupid use of herbicides and pesticides is more likely. When using herbicides and pesticides, it is important to keep a healthy population to overgrow the by herbicides affected population. The change is pretty large that the new survivor is maybe strong against the poison, but weak compared to the original plants. This has been studied, and it is shown that by spraying 90% wiht pesticides or herbicides, and leave 10% of the original population untouched, the poison tends to be effective for a longer period (up to 10 years longer on the same pest). The only issue is, is that 10% of the harvest needs to be sacrificed to the pest.
In the end, every pest gets immune.

Re:Cross polination is a myth

[grikdog]

Actually, the cross was between oilseed rape and charlock, previously presumed to be too distantly related to allow cross-pollinaton. As a general rule, plant sex is way more complicated than human kindergarten-variety sex (it has diploid and tetraploid genes, alternation of generations, and other bizarre complications including susceptibility to mosaic viruses), so the ordinary sex paradigms and assumptions are suspect. Scientists regard this cross to be more than interesting for the right reasons, in other words.

Re:Cross polination is a myth

[X-rated Ouroboros]

Two different species are geneticaly incompatible to produce a viable offspring.
I think you mean fertile, not viable. Plants are dirty whores. They'll have sex with just about anything and, a surprisingly large number of times, viable seeds will result. The plants that grow from these seeds are generally infertile (not unlike a mule), but not always.

As for the "only kill 90% of 'em" comment. It comes out of antibiotic research... and while I'd be wildly suspicious of anyone trying to draw a direct analogy between bacteria on a petri dish and multicellular eukarya in the wild... you don't even have the regiment right. Basically it was the comparison of the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations where a plate was allowed to be recolonized by suriviors v. a plate that was reseeded with the wild population. The analogy to farming would be to purposefully plant non-resistant strains of undesirable plants so they could compete with any resistant varieties... not "don't kill all of 'em".

Re:New science

[gardenermike]

Well, the parent is just wrong. I'm a former botany student with an emphasis in molecular biology and genetics. With animals, you can't usually get unrelated species to crossbreed (but even that's not absolute). With less specialized organisms, well, the rules are a lot less strict. Bacteria, for instance, swap genetic material across species lines all of the time, and often will have specialized "sex organs" for that purpose. Plants aren't quite so loose as that, but they can, and do, regularly cross species boundaries to some degree, and even manage to pull off viable reproduction when a cell division fails at the growing tip (doubling the chromosome count, and in effect generating a new species.) In addition, many weeds are crucifers, related to the rape (canola) plant, making that particular crossover especially likely. This is a real problem, recognized by real scientists.

Re:This has nothing to do with genetic modificatio

[Robber Baron]

If you want non-GM foods, there are thousands of grocery stores for you. Go shop there. Problem solved!

Except in many cases you the consumer are prevented from having the information that would allow you to make that decision:

That assertion gave way to an aggressive business maneuver by Monsanto that may have been enough in itself to turn a milk glutton into a vegan.

The biotechnology giant used the fact that there's no way to distinguish BGH-enhanced milk as a way to prevent non-users from labeling their milk, claiming there is no way to verify it.
Gary Barton, Monsanto's spokesman, denied it. "There's a total misperception that we're against labeling," he said.

More precisely, it's what the labels often don't say that rattles Monsanto. "No BGH-added" by itself on a milk carton is enough to send the company into a tizzy of threats and lawsuits.

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