HEAVEN knows where it came from. It was just one of those daft thoughts that
ghost in out of nowhere in the early hours when you鈥檙e half asleep.
Herbicide-resistant plants, said the mystery voice, could be the most
formidable ally yet in the battle environmentalists are waging against the use
of chemical weedkillers.
How on earth do you work that one out, you might well ask? Aren鈥檛 these
鈥淔rankencrops鈥� the very spawn of the devil, spreading herbicide-resistance genes
to all and sundry, creating superweeds that can鈥檛 be killed by any known
weedkiller? Yes, indeed they are. And that鈥檚 precisely the point.
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Think about it for a second. If weeds are no longer susceptible to
weedkillers, farmers would have no choice but to start hauling them out by hand,
or with mechanical weeders. This, as I understand it, is precisely what the
organic movement and its friends want. The escaping genes would be the death of
the herbicide industry, forcing a return to a chemical-free nirvana. It鈥檚 not
like antibiotic resistance鈥攚e have every reason to fear the spread of
resistance to drugs on which our future health depends. Surely resistance to
weedkillers should be welcomed with open arms, especially by
environmentalists.
Away from farmers鈥� fields, there shouldn鈥檛 be any ecological fallout, either.
Farmers don鈥檛 go round spraying nature reserves with weedkillers, after all. So
if weeds carrying the gene were to escape to the forest, they wouldn鈥檛 have any
special evolutionary advantage over their neighbours and the trait would fade
out.
The same can鈥檛 be said, of course, of plants carrying genes that make them
resistant to viruses or insects. Wee beasties turn up in the forest as well as
in the fields, so gene hopping could wreak ecological havoc if some wild plants
became beastie-resistant while others remained susceptible.
But back to the herbicide-resistant plants. Would it work? Would the genes
spread far and wide enough to bankrupt those much reviled herbicide
manufacturers? I guess a few weedy relatives here and there would
help鈥攇enes spread more easily through cross-pollination, they say.
Oilseed rape has wild turnip as a relative, so that鈥檚 that one solved,
especially if environmentalists plant vast quantities of it everywhere and thus
virtually guarantee the creation of superweeds. Maize could be trickier. But
even in Europe, where wild relatives are thin on the ground, I鈥檓 sure it would
be possible to import some to provide weeds for the genes to spread to.
But even that might not be necessary. In time, natural gene shuttles such as
viruses and bacteria should do the job, spreading weedkiller resistance not just
to plants, but to just about everything. So we鈥檒l all be herbicide-resistant,
and . . .
At that point I woke up. And quickly dipped my head under the cold tap.