Posted on 08/09/2006 3:42:28 PM PDT by blam
Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the US
09 August 2006
Andy Coghlan
A nondescript grass discovered in the Oregon countryside is hardly an alien invasion. Yet the plant - a genetically modified form of a grass commonly grown on golf courses - is worrying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental impact assessment of a GM plant.
It is the first time a GM plant has escaped into the wild in the US, and it has managed it before securing USDA approval. The plant, creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera, carries a bacterial gene that makes it immune to the potent herbicide glyphosate, better known as Roundup. The manufacturer, The Scotts Company, Marysville, Ohio, is hoping the grass will provide a turf that makes it easier for golf course owners to manage their fairways and greens by letting them kill competing weedy grasses with glyphosate.
“It could prove extremely popular with the thousands of golf course managers in the US, making it easy for it to spread”Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection Agency's labs in Corvallis, Oregon, identified nine escapees out of 20,400 plants of various grass varieties sampled within a 4.8-kilometre radius of the site where the bentgrass is being cultivated, the most distant 3.8 kilometres away. The team showed that the GM grass has spread both by pollinating non-GM plants to form hybrids, and by seed movement.
Bentgrass is a perennial, so once out there it regrows year after year, whereas most GM crops - mainly soybeans, maize and canola (oilseed rape) - are annuals, unable to reproduce, harvested each year and replaced with an entirely new crop the next. Another worry is that unlike the other GM crops. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I want a pony.
What's wrong with grass made assault weapons? I WANT ONE!!!! ;-)
The Law of Unintended Consequences isn't really something to laugh at, though ... and that's the real danger posed by GM "escapes."
Perhaps this one won't matter much ... though of course even this grass could cause problems down the road. But if nothing else, it shows how easy it would be for things actually to get out in the wild.
Trifids???
Green asphalt!
Perhaps we should have creeping bentgrass face off against kudzu on the battlefield....
What a product! It literally sells itself.
That's a heck of a headline
Is it just me that sees this as a REALLY BIG DEAL!?!?!?
No contest. One nice summer and the bentgrass is history.
It was a hybrid. A cross of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about it is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus.
>>>>"A lawn that won't die?"<<<<
I call BS, I can kill any lawn! (even when I'm not even at home)
TT
That is my kinda lawn!
TT
I wouldn't want to see it invade farmland.
There are other herbicides which would probably control it (IIRC Atrazine, Princep). It could still be a pain.
She said she did it after her husband died. She can blow away the leaves, and play with the rocks at her leisure!
As an ardent fan of golf who abuses his share of the turf this sounds great!
LOL!
Last week this was a wilderness area.
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