Building a Stronger, Tougher Bollworm

bollworm1.jpgIt was only a matter of time.

Every farmer and gardener knows by now that pesticides are a fool’s gold solution, increasing short-term yields at the expense of the long-term. So it should come as no surprise that insect pests are evolving resistance to genetically modified crops with built-in pesticides.

The results of a new study provide the first evidence of resistance to transgenic cotton crops, analyzing data from six different experiments conducted on various insect pests in GM crop fields in such disparate global locations as the U.S., Australia, China and Spain. The evolution of this transgenic resistance, however, has only been detected in bollworms in the cotton fields in Missouri and Arkansas.

Why only in these locations? Researchers speculate that the absence of “refuges” within these vast cotton fields may be at least partly to blame. These GM-free patches provide havens for pest populations where the intense selection pressures effected by transgenic crops are absent, slowing down the evolution of resistant populations in theory; by providing habitat for such non-resistant populations, the probability of mating between a resistant and non-resistant pest increases, thereby slowing the spread of resistant genes.

Ultimately, however, the presence of such refuges will not prevent the continued evolution of transgenic resistance; it will only momentarily slacken the rate at which such resistance develops. As the study asserts, the large-scale adoption of bioengineered crops has induced “one of the largest selections for insect resistance ever known.”

This spells eventual trouble for farmers of these crops and the populations that are dependent on them, as this manufactured defense against these tiny enemies of agriculture becomes less dependable. In addition to the more obvious repercussions, the cost of licensing GM crop seeds from companies such as Monsanto will become a greater burden, as harvest yields and their attendant profits begin to dwindle. What this could mean down the line is a potential wave of farm foreclosures similar to that faced by small-scale farmers around the world in recent years as a result of the battle over Monsanto’s Terminator and Roundup Ready seed technology, when proprietary strains often spread to fields sown with their traditional counterparts.


Posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 11:59 am | Tagged in Food, Technology | posted by Bill

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