GM Rice Passes Unexpected Benefits To Weeds

ananyo writes "A genetic-modification technique used widely to make crops herbicide resistant has been shown to confer advantages on a weedy form of rice, even in the absence of the herbicide. Used in Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready' crops, for example, resistance to the herbicide glyphosate enables farmers to wipe out most weeds from the fields without damaging their crops. A common assumption has been that if such herbicide resistance genes manage to make it into weedy or wild relatives, they would be disadvantageous and plants containing them would die out. But the new study led by Lu Baorong, an ecologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, challenges that view: it shows that a weedy form of the common rice crop, Oryza sativa, gets a significant fitness boost from glyphosate resistance, even when glyphosate is not applied. The transgenic hybrids had higher rates of photosynthesis, grew more shoots and flowers and produced 48 — 125% more seeds per plant than non-transgenic hybrids — in the absence of glyphosate, the weedkiller they were resistant to."

Comments

Re:Wait...what?

[Valdrax]

The notion was that traits like glyphosate resistance bear a certain cost which would be why they haven't arisen naturally and been preserved. This can be seen in antibiotic resistance in bacteria, though even there it takes many, many generations for this to sort itself out.

So, if genes cross into wild plants, the idea was that they'd cause the "contaminated" wild plants to be losers, which would self-limit the propagation of such genes in the wild. Unfortunately, the opposite seems to be the case: the genes that cause glyphosate resistance are actually a win-win for the plants receiving them, meaning that they'll have a competitive advantage even without glyphosate artificially putting selection pressure on them, which means the genes will actively spread in wild plants due to natural selection.

GM Rice NOT passing to weeds

[NoKaOi]

The headline is outright wrong and misleading. The headline implies that GM rice is passing the trait onto weeds. That is not the case here. The study has nothing to do with whether or not the traits can get passed to weeds from GM rice. The study is not saying that GM rice passed anything along to weeds. It is saying that when intentionally GM'd, the weeds get benefits other than just glyphosate resistance. The stated conclusion of the article is that if the trait got into the weed it would be bad. Duh. The thing that makes the study a bit interesting is that it challenges a previous assumption regarding why it would be bad.

Re:so

[Baloroth]

Who is Monsanto going to sue over this??

Why would you assume Monsanto doesn't like this news? If the resistance in weeds won't naturally die out over time, that means glyphosate will become less effective over time even if it stops being used. Since Monsanto's patents don't last forever (yet), that means they can develop and patent a new genetic modification and herbicide (and the "process" of using one with the other, because that is apparently inventive all in itself) that will be required once glyphosate loses its effectiveness. If glyphosate didn't lose it's effectiveness, people would just keep using that after Monsanto lost their monopoly.

In fact, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, given Monsanto's history, to find out they already knew about this "problem." Maybe even planned it that way.

Re:GM Goodness?

[sjames]

I fail to see the horror in this.

If you were a farmer faced with a big bill for herbicides and a field full of vigorous weeds that it won't kill after all, you might see the horror.

Re:GM Goodness?

[Ian A. Shill]

Umm, no. Trucks use clear diesel, just the same as cars. Dyed fuel is for tractors and other farm equipment, and furnace fuel. The difference is clear diesel is priced to include "road tax", whereas dyed fuel is not to be used for fueling vehicles that travel on public roads. As for trains, I have no idea.

Did you know that truckers have to buy a different diesel fuel than non-commercial drivers? It's more expensive than the regular diesel, the only real difference other than price is the non-commercial has a dye in it so the tax collectors can identify when a driver cheaps out and buys the wrong fuel. This is just an example of where two otherwise identical products are priced differently and are required to be used for different purposes.

Re:GM Goodness?

[dryeo]

Canola: also not a weed and Roundup Ready canola is a Monsanto product. Monsanto isn't suing people over them having Roundup-resistant weeds. That's not in Monsanto's best interest because they'd have to argue, in court, that genes from their GMO crops are jumping species--what a weapon to give the anti-GMOers.

A weed is just a plant out of place, any plant can be a weed. If you aren't growing Canola and your field is full of glyphosate resistant Canola,you're not going to be happy.