It's certain that Henry A. Wallace, founder of Pioneer Hi-Bred, would be
appalled at what his company is doing with genetic engineering.

Tom
--------------------------------------
Subj:         Seed companies block critical research on GM pollen spread
Date:   02-10-16 18:43:06 EDT
From:   [log in to unmask] (Laurel Hopwood)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to:   [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]

Norfolk Genetic Information Network (ngin),
http://www.ngin.org.uk

Seed companies block critical research on GM pollen spread
Nature 419, 655 (2002);doi:10.1038/419655a
Superweed study falters as seed firms deny access to transgene
REX DALTON AND SAN DIEGO
edited

According to this article, two major seed companies this week stand accused
of hindering attempts to assess whether genetically modified sunflowers can
turn their wild counterparts into 'superweeds'. Cold shoulder: Allison Snow
has been left unable to follow up her experiments to test whether
transgenes can cause wild sunflowers to proliferate as weeds. A team led by
Allison Snow, a plant ecologist at Ohio State University, has uncovered
preliminary evidence that a transgene that confers insect resistance can
increase the number of seeds produced by wild sunflowers.
This could allow the wild plants to proliferate as weeds.

But Pioneer Hi-Bred International of Des Moines, Iowa, and
Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences have now blocked a follow-up study by
refusing to allow the team access to either the transgene or the seeds from
the earlier study.

Snow revealed the problem on 13 October during a lecture on transgene
research at the Seventh International Symposium on the Biosafety of
Genetically Modified Organisms in Beijing.  The transgenic sunflowers
contain a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which allows
them to produce a natural insecticide. The results of Snow's initial study
were revealed this August at the Ecological Society of America's annual
meeting in Tucson, Arizona, and have been accepted for publication in
Ecological Applications. They suggest that if the Bt transgene were to
migrate into wild sunflowers, the plants' resistance to insects would
increase the number of seeds produced.

Both seed companies confirm that they have refused to make the necessary
materials available to Snow.

Mark Tepfer, a plant virologist at the French national agricultural
agency's laboratory in Versailles, France, says that Snow's work is "one of
the first really good experiments" to examine transgene flow to the wild.

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