Pesticide Potpourri

• Monsanto Co. announced it is expanding its hunt for a technology to fight nematodes, which cost U.S. soybean farmers alone more than $1 billion a year.  The company is paying an undisclosed amount for exclusive rights to evaluate a seed-coating technology developed by Plant Health Care Inc., a company established in Pittsburgh and registered in London.  If the technology known as Harpin succeeds, a product could be available to farmers by 2010.  (St. Louis Today, 12/13/07). 
•  Gene flow from genetically modified crop plants to their wild relatives will have little overall impact on human health or the environment, predicts a team of researchers in a report released in mid-December by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST).  Gene flow has always occurred naturally but has drawn particular attention during the past ten years, as genetically modified crop plants have moved into commercial production.  “Regulatory requirements and market standards that are specific to crops developed using biotechnology have resulted in much closer monitoring of gene flow than has been done in the past,” said plant scientist Kent Bradford, a co-author of the report and director of UC Davis' Seed Biotechnology Center.  “After analyzing a wide range of crop-trait-location combinations, it was determined that relatively few of these combinations present the potential for gene flow to adversely affect the environment or human health,” Bradford said.  “Gene flow within a given crop can result in economic impacts for specific markets but these can be managed through proven strategies that make it possible for genetically modified crops and nonbiotech crops to co-exist.”  In the report, the contributing scientists describe the biological traits that are being imparted to both biotech crops and nonbiotech crops, and the ramifications each has for gene flow.  They discuss the potential for the inadvertent mixing of seeds or other genetic material from a given plant with a shipment of other seed or grain, and examine isolation and segregation methods for preventing such unwanted gene flow.  The report summarizes existing regulatory and risk-assessment mechanisms for biotech crops and discusses the potential economic implications of biotech crops in the marketplace.  It also explores future policy and research issues.  The full text of the paper is available online at http://www.cast-science.org.  CAST is an international consortium of 38 scientific and professional societies that assembles and interprets science-based information and disseminates it to the public.  (UC Davis, 12/13/07). 
•  DuPont’s first research and development center in India, which is due to open in early 2008, will for the first time see basic research in areas like crop genetics head to an offshore site.  While critical research, so far, is concentrated in DuPont’s laboratories in the U.S.A., the Indian center, which has some 300 scientists, will deal in developing biotech traits and technologies that will be incorporated into multiple crops for the global market.  In addition, it will focus on renewable energy, which includes bio-fuel and solar cells with photo-voltaic technology.  Addressing the media at the 150-acre experimental station in Wilmington, DE, the company’s chief science and technology officer and senior VP Uma Chowdhury said the new center was part of a $1.4 billion investment in a diverse range of technologies, from agriculture to electronics.  (The Times of India, 12/17/07). 

•  Researchers from Bayer CropScience are claiming that a genetically modified plant is not genetically modified when its genes are being suppressed rather than spliced.  The German firm has developed a way of engineering plants to withstand tougher conditions that could theoretically ameliorate the ethical concerns posed by activists.  In stressful circumstances, plants protect themselves by switching on a gene called PARP.  This produces a protein of the same name that repairs the plant's DNA and shields its cells from damage.  Unfortunately, the protein needs a lot of energy to do its job, and because plants can’t predict how long tough conditions will last, they end up over-producing it.  If the hard times persist, the plant eventually runs out of energy.  Bayer used RNA interference to fine tune the repressive levels of PARP so the plant can continue to grow while still being protected from the elements.  (Telegraph Media Group, 12/18/07). 
•  Major League Baseball had an auction for memorabilia from the 2007 season in December.  One of the items up for bid was a can of bug spray used in the Yankee’s dugout when adult midges swarmed Cleveland’s Jacob Field during the American League playoff.  The can garnered $673 online.  (Gainesville Sun, 12/6/07).