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GM seed flow



The publication below points out an important route for seed dispersal
from GM crops. Seeds can travel for great distances in the mud in wheel
wells and mud flaps of trucks or on cars as well as farm machinery. The
point is very important in areas where biopharmaceutical crops are being
produced and field tested. The implication for organic farmers is clear!
Proceedings Series B Royal Society DOI 10.1098/rspb.2003.2407 june 2003
Evidence for gene flow via seed dispersal from crop
to wild relatives in Beta vulgaris (Chenopodiaceae):
consequences for the release of genetically modified
crop species with weedy lineages
J.-F. Arnaud*, F. Viard†, M. Delescluse and J. Cuguen
UMR CNRS 8016, Laboratoire de Ge´ne´tique et Evolution des Populations
Ve´ge´tales, Baˆtiment SN2, Universite´ de Lille 1,
59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq cedex, France
Gene flow and introgression from cultivated to wild plant populations
have important evolutionary and
ecological consequences and require detailed investigations for risk
assessments of transgene escape into
natural ecosystems. Sugar beets (Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris) are of
particular concern because: (i) they are
cross-compatible with their wild relatives (the sea beet, B. vulgaris
ssp. maritima); (ii) crop-to-wild gene
flow is likely to occur via weedy lineages resulting from hybridization
events and locally infesting fields.
Using a chloroplastic marker and a set of nuclear microsatellite loci,
the occurrence of crop-to-wild gene
flow was investigated in the French sugar beet production area within a
‘contact-zone’ in between coastal
wild populations and sugar beet fields. The results did not reveal large
pollen dispersal from weed to wild
beets. However, several pieces of evidence clearly show an escape of
weedy lineages from fields via seed
flow. Since most studies involving the assessment of transgene escape
from crops to wild outcrossing
relatives generally focused only on pollen dispersal, this last result
was unexpected: it points out the key
role of a long-lived seed bank and highlights support for transgene
escape via man-mediated long-distance
dispersal events.