A review of the literature shows that the environmental risks and benefits of genetically modified crops have varying degrees of certainty. For example, field studies have documented growing resistance to highly used pesticides. However, the risks of gene flow and deleterious effects on non-target organisms have not been evaluated at large field scales. Similarly, reduced pesticide use and toxi...

BACKGROUND Genetic engineering offers the opportunity to generate unique genetic variation that is either absent in the sexually compatible gene pool or has very low heritability. The generation of transgenic plants, coupled with breeding, has led to the production of widely used transgenic cultivars in several major cash crops, such as maize, soybean, cotton and canola. The process for regulat...

Transgenic cotton that has been engineered to produce insecticidal toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and so to resist the pest cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) has been widely planted in Asia. Analysis of the population dynamics of H. armigera from 1992 to 2007 in China indicated that a marked decrease in regional outbreaks of this pest in multiple crops was associated with the plan...

In reference to what was published today at Scidev (Gould, 2006): “GM crops are compatible with sustainable agriculture”, I wish to comment: Massive use of transgenic crops poses potential ecological risks; genetically modified (GM) crops are not compatible with sustainable or organic farming or any other alternative form of production. GM agriculture compromises the capacity of farmers to mana...

The adoption of pest-resistant transgenic plants to reduce yield loss and pesticide utilization has been successful in the past three decades. Recently, transgenic plant expressing double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) targeting pest genes emerges as a promising strategy for improving pest resistance in crops. The steroid hormone, 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), predominately controls insect molting via its nu...

With the rapid adoption of transgenic crops, gene flow from transgenic crops to wild relatives through pollen dispersal is of significant concern andwarrants both empirical and theoretical studies to assess the risk of introduction of transgenes into wild populations. We propose to use the (biased) voter model in a heterogeneous environment to investigate the effects of recurrent gene flow from...