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superweeds




Since this list hasn't been terribly busy lately, I hope no one objects to a
litle news from the GMO front, sent to me by my friend Tom Atlee, whose
website on co-intelligence http://www.co-intelligence.org is well worth
looking at.

Toby
______

GE CANOLA SUPERWEEDS SPREAD ACROSS CANADA
The Ottawa Citizen
By Tom Spears
February 6, 2001

http://www.purefood.org/gefood/canolasuperweeds.cfm

Genetically modified "superweeds" have invaded Canadian farms -- canola
plants engineered to help farmers that instead escaped and cross-bred with
each other to form plants stronger than their parents.

Most pesticides can't kill these canola superweeds, which are sprouting up
in wheat fields and other areas where farmers don't want them, Canada's
expert panel on biotechnology says.

Three types of canola, each engineered with genes to resist one type of
weedkiller, have merged into new varieties resistant to many pesticides.
Instead of helping farmers avoid weeds, the canola itself has become the
weed.

The superweed-canola is especially bad in the Prairies, where canola is a
multibillion-dollar crop, says a report released yesterday from the Royal
Society of Canada's biotech experts.

The biotech industry has been "naive" in thinking that good farming methods
alone will hold superweeds at bay, the report says.

And the panel warns that as the next generation of genetically engineered
crops becomes more complex, it will be tougher to head off the superweeds of
the future.

Canola "is the classic example" of a superweed, said Brian Ellis, a co-chair
of the panel and molecular biologist from the University of British
Columbia.

Canola varieties such as Liberty Link and Roundup Ready were engineered to
use with a pesticide [sic] (such as Roundup). The idea was that a farmer
would plant canola resistant to Roundup, then spray the field with Roundup.

Everything except the canola would die.

Where canola is nearly pesticide-proof, it can crowd out other plants --
crops and weeds -- in farm fields.

But its resistance to pesticides doesn't help its survival in the wild,
where there are no pesticides.

"The next generation ... is crops that come along carrying genes thatmake
them more frost-tolerant or drought-tolerant. They have an advantage over
their wild cousins," Mr. Ellis said.

That means they will have a bioengineered advantage in taking over farm
fields and in moving through wild areas.

"Herbicide-resistant volunteer canola plants are beginning to develop into
a major problem" in the Prairies, the panel's report says. (Volunteer plants
are those that seed themselves.)

Canola has been farmed for only a few generations and so it still has some
wild tendencies -- such as dropping its seeds before a farmer can harvest
them. This plants seeds for next year.

And plants, the report says, "can be quite promiscuous." Canola plants will
breed with any other canola they meet, creating the phenomenon of "gene
stacking," or accumulating all the genes originally built into different
strains by different laboratories.

This forces farmers to retreat to "broad-spectrum" pesticides - chemicals
that kill just about anything, such as 2,4-D. These are chemicals that
farmers were trying to get away from in the first place.


"The point is, technology is still driving agricultural production along a
chemical-dependence route. And I think that's something the government has
to take a very serious look at," Mr. Ellis said.

Biotech industry reps told the expert panel that good farming will stop
superweeds from evolving.

"This perspective may be unduly naive," the report says. "In the real world,
human error and expediency may often compromise guidelines for the growing
of such crops."