| Bollworm Catching Up with Monsanto's Bt Crops |
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| Written by Heather McKee | |
| Monday, 18 February 2008 | |
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Well, what do you know? A little worm is catching up with two of Monsanto’s transgenic crops. In a new article in Nature Biotechnology, a researcher from the University of Arizona reports that the cotton bollworm is showing increased resistance to Bacillus thuringiensus (Bt), the poisonous bacterium whose genome is blasted into Monsanto’s transgenic seed corn and cotton.
In the science world, the ongoing evolutionary battle between the eaters and the eaten is known as the “Red Queen” hypothesis, because of the Queen’s remark to Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in one place.”
Transgenic corn and cotton may temporarily be able to poison some pests - but the pest populations will always veer toward individuals that have any sort of tolerance to the poison. In the meantime, other pests unaffected by Bt may simply take their place on the cotton boll or the corn, as happened with massive mealy bug infestations in Punjab, India.
So Monsanto will have to keep fiddling with the corn and cotton genes to stay ahead of the pests. And they are – they’ve already released a new corn with a slightly modified Bt blast.
Farmers in the southern U.S. say that they have not noticed the cotton bollworm’s resistance yet. This could be due to the new generation of transgenic vegetables, additional pesticide sprays used in the fields, or the fact that farmers are required to use a technique known as “refuging,” where patches of wild corn are planted among the transgenic, ensuring that some “weak bugs” can still survive, and therefore dilute the genes of any possible new “super-bugs.”
And so the race goes on, with Monsanto holding the reins for transgenic corn and cotton, while Mother Nature cracks the whip for the bollworm.
Via NPR
Comments (2)
  written by Kristin, February 22, 2008
Does big agribusiness even consider the forces of nature when coming up with their new breeds of crops? Monoculture doesn't work in the long run. The soil and the environment needs the natural variation. Farming traditions that were popular on a small scale like natural pest control via companion planting and plant rotation needs to somehow be brought to the commercial level. I fear this would require a total reinvention of our food system. Currently we would not be able to support our "normal" food consumption practices using small-scale farming techniques. Of course, if we got rid of all the corn byproducts in our food, and returned to whole foods, we would have more land to grow the variety of crops needed to sustain ourselves.
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It's true what our moms said...we are what we eat. In fact, it's truer than they thought. What I eat doesn't just affect me anymore, it affects all of us.
Unfortunately, the story of food can sometimes be complicated. But envirovores help each other out...which is why this blog will be bringing you news, tips, and information about food and the environment every step of the way.
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"survival of the fittest"
The manner that creatures can adapt is really quite remarkable.
I think that we need to find a better way to grow food than using genetically modified crops and pesticides. What that will be on a commercial scale I am not sure.