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C B C . C A N e w s - F u l l S t o r y : GM
plants don't make good weeds - study LONDON, ENGLAND-- Genetically
modified, GM, crops don't survive well in the wild, and are no more likely to
invade other habitats than their unchanged counterparts. That's according to a
ten-year survey of GM crops published in the journal Nature. Researchers hope this study
will help allay fears that GM plants will become the super-weeds of the future,
either in their own right or by breeding with unmodified plants. In 1990, a team of
researchers planted experimental plots of all the GM crop plants available:
maize, sugar beets, oilseed rape and potatoes. Unmodified crops were
planted alongside the GM plots at 12 sites in the United Kingdom. Ten years later, the plants
hadn't become self-seeding, self-sustaining populations, nor had they spread
onto neighbouring unplanted areas. GM and non-GM plants both
did equally badly – within four years, all plots of maize, beet and rape had
died out. Only one plot of potatoes lasted the full decade, and all the
survivors were unmodified varieties. John Beringer, a
microbiologist at the University of Bristol, UK, says approval of GM crops is
based on the assumption that crop plants don't survive well without the
attention of farmers. Beringer says it's nice to see this played out in the
fields. This result may have been
encouraging, but the researchers caution that new plants developed with traits
like drought tolerance or pest resistance could have a better chance of
surviving on their own, and will need to be tested.
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