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Question

gene pollution by GMOs to native species

Submitted by: reddysir


Answer

Expert response from Community Manager

Moderator for GMOAnswers.com

Friday, 05/06/2015 14:22

Your question seems to be asking what is being done to prevent GMOs cross breeding with native species, resulting in what some call “gene pollution.” Several experts have answered similar questions on the site.

 

First, a lengthy article from our Studies & Articles section by Dr. Peter Raven, president emeritus at the Missouri Botanical Garden, analyzes the effect of thousands of years of agriculture on biodiversity. Reading the detailed piece will shed light on many areas, but by way of context about organisms’ breeding, Dr. Raven notes:

 

“Gene flow between crops and their wild or weedy relatives has been a constant feature of agriculture ever since people began to cultivate plants. As many authors, starting especially with Edgar Anderson, have documented, hybridization of this kind has had a major role in enhancing the genetic variability of both the crops, facilitating the selection of suites of desired characteristics, and of their weedy or wild relatives. In some cases — as, for example, in the origin of hexaploid (2n = 42) bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) — the hybridization has been followed by polyploidization, stabilizing the hybrid and its characteristics as an object for further selection through selective planting in the mixed fields. In others, as in the origin of maize (Zea mays), repeated backcrossing and selection of plants with improved characteristics from wild relatives, teosintes, has facilitated the assembly of the characteristics of modern maize over a period of perhaps 7,000 years in southern Mexico. There are no naturally occurring plants that resemble either bread wheat or maize, and of course bread wheat can form fertile hybrids only with other hexaploids. Maize, by contrast, can hybridize with teosintes that have the same chromosome number (2n = 20), and the characteristics of the wild and cultivated plants can be recombined in different ways both in the crops and in their wild relatives. The diversity of local strains, land races, of maize in Mexico and elsewhere has a great deal to do with the recombination of these features following hybridization of the sort discussed.”

 

Additionally, Juan Manuel de la Fuente Martínez, Regulatory Policy and Scientific Affairs at Monsanto Latin America North, answered a question on gene pollution, using Mexican corn varieties as a case study, concluding that “there is vast evidence that GM traits approved and used for maize commercial production does not modify its composition nor its food, feed and environmental safety. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the presence of GM traits will impact negatively in maize landrace biodiversity.”