NEWS: Weed-friendly GM crops can help the environment
New Scientist
27 April 2007
Excerpt…
THE trouble with spraying fields of crops genetically modified to resist herbicides is that all the weeds die. Bad for the environment - if good for the farmer. Now there is a sweet solution.
John Pidgeon of the Broom's Barn Research Station, Bury St Edmunds, UK, and colleagues analysed the results of British farm-scale evaluation trials of GM crops. When GM sugar beet was grown using a two-spray system to control weeds, weed biomass and seed fell by 17 and 31 per cent respectively, in comparison to conventional growing methods, meaning less food for birds and mammals.
Pidgeon's team suggests leaving two rows of crops in every 100 rows untouched. They have calculated that this would produce weed seed equivalent to that in typical beet crops (Proceedings of The Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0401).
Pidgeon says that growing GM sugar beet would bring major agronomic and economic benefits to farmers. "Weed control conventionally in sugar beet is rather difficult, yet in herbicide-tolerant GM beet it is very simple," he says….
From issue 2601 of New Scientist magazine, 27 April 2007, page 16
Full article at New Scientist.
