A SCOTTISH study has stirred up controversy about genetically modified crops ahead of the trial results due to be announced in the UK this week (see 鈥淏anning modified crops is not enough to save wildlife鈥�). Pollen from an oilseed rape plot fertilised plants up to 26 kilometres away, over six times the expected distance. Opponents of GM crops have seized on the results to reinforce their call for a ban. 鈥淚f GM contamination cannot be controlled in test sites, what hope is there if GM crops are widely grown,鈥� says Pete Riley of Friends of the Earth.
Gavin Ramsay鈥檚 team at the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Invergowrie, Dundee, set up 鈥渂ait鈥� plants up to 26 kilometres away from a plot of oilseed rape whose pollen could be detected by DNA analysis. Unlike ordinary rape plants, which can self-pollinate, the 鈥渂ait鈥� plants could only be pollinated by other plants.
Ramsay鈥檚 results, issued this week by the UK government along with three other reports on 鈥済ene flow鈥�, suggest that most pollen falls within tens of metres of the edge of a field, and so would not spread far. Pollination would be even lower in normal situations where neighbouring rape plants are self-pollinating, crowding out foreign pollen. The flow to distant locations was rare, and Ramsay鈥檚 team suspects that bees or pollen beetles carried the pollen there.
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The Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops, which represents biotech companies, seized on the findings of another of the studies by the Central Science Laboratory in York, concluding that in maize the European threshold of 0.9 per cent contamination could be met with a field separation of just 24.4 metres, well within the 80 metres advocated by the initiative itself.