Plants in the wild could be treated with herbicides.
Weedy rice can absorb transgenes derived from genetically modified crop rice through cross-pollination. Credit: Xiao Yang
The use of genetic modification to create crops resistant to herbicides is widely used to produce advantages for the varieties of rice that are weedy. This finding suggests that these changes could have an impact on the environment beyond farm.
There are many kinds of crops are genetically modified to be resistive to the glyphosate. Roundup was the first herbicide to be marketed. Farmers are able to eliminate herbicides from their fields using this glyphosate resistance without causing damage to their crops.
Glyphosate slows the growth of plants by blocking EPSP synthase (an enzyme that is involved in the creation of certain amino acids, and various other molecules). ラウンドアップ could be as large as 35% or more of a plant’s total mass. Genetic modification is used in, for instance, Roundup Ready plants made by Monsanto Biotechnology, a biotech company that is headquartered in St Louis, Missouri. It involves inserting genes into the genome of the crop to boost EPSP synthase-synthase-production. Genes are typically derived usually from bacteria that infects plants.
The added EPSP synthase lets the plant resist the effects of glyphosate. Biotechnology labs also tried to utilize the genes of plants to boost EPSP-synthase levels, in part to exploit an American loophole which permits the approval of regulatory authorities of transgenes not derived bacteria-based pests.
A few studies have looked into whether transgenes that confer glyphosate tolerance may — once they become weedy or wild relatives via cross-pollinating — increase the plants’ survival and reproduce. Norman Ellstrand is a University of California Riverside plant geneticist. “The assumption is that any transgene can cause disadvantage in the wild, in absence of pressure to select, since it could reduce fitness,” Ellstrand said.
https://pesticide.maff.go.jp/agricultural-chemicals/details/14360 , led by Lu Baorong, an ecologist at Fudan University in Shanghai, challenges that view It reveals that a weedy version of the popular rice plant, Oryza sativa, gets an impressive fitness boost due to glyphosate resistance, even when glyphosate isn’t used.
Lu and his coworkers have genetically altered the cultivated rice species to express the EPSP synthase. They then crossed it with the weedy parent.
The team then permitted the offspring from cross-breeding to cross-breed with one other to create second generation hybrids. ラウンドアップ were identical genetically except for the amount of EPSP synthase genes they had. As was expected, those with more copies had higher enzyme levels and produced an increased amount of amino acid tryptophan compared to their unmodified counterparts.
Researchers also discovered that the transgenic hybrids had higher rates of photosynthesis, grew more shoots and flowers and produced 48 to 125 percent more seeds than the non-transgenic hybrids- in the absence of glyphosate.
Lu claims that making the weedy grain more competitive could cause more problems to farmers around the world who have crops infected by the insect.
Brian Ford Lloyd, a UK plant scientist, stated that the EPSP Synthase gene may be introduced in wild rice varieties. This would erode the genetic diversity of their species, which is very important. “This is among the most clear examples of highly plausible harmful impacts (of GM crops] upon the natural environment.”
The general public believes that genetically modified plants containing more copies of their own genes than those from microorganisms are safe. ラウンドアップ is also challenged by this study. “Our study shows that this is not necessarily the case,” says Lu.
ラウンドアップ 畑に使える have said that this discovery requires review of the regulations for the future on the use of genetically modified plants. “Some individuals are suggesting that biosafety regulation can be eased because we’ve reached an incredibly high level of confidence with two decades of genetic engineering,” says Ellstrand. “But the study shows that new products require an unbiased assessment.”