Genitically modified golf courses planted in IS
Times spotter | 21.05.2002 00:19
THE world’s first genetically modified golf courses have been planted at 14 secret locations in America, preparing the way for club hackers to putt on greens as smooth as those at Augusta and St Andrews.
Greens, tees and fairways at the trial courses have been seeded with a strain of GM grass that provides the truest of playing surfaces, and is also cheap and easy for greenkeepers to maintain. The development, by the American seed company Scotts, will make top-quality grass available to ordinary golf clubs for the first time, allowing them to produce the fast, smooth greens that usually only championship courses can afford.
Environmental campaigners say that the planting is an unnecessary and frivolous application of biotechnology that puts wildlife at risk without any serious benefit.
The grass, which should be commercially available in America within two years, is a version of creeping bentgrass, a variety that is accepted as one of the finest surfaces for golf. It is used in its natural form at courses such as Augusta, Georgia, home of the Masters, and Loch Lomond in Scotland.
Creeping bentgrass usually makes for an extremely high-maintenance, if high-quality, lawn. It is very susceptible to weeds and weedkiller, and must be tended by hand for the best results. It is beyond the means of most clubs. The GM variety carries a bacterial gene that confers resistance to a herbicide made by Monsanto called Roundup, or glyphosphate. As a result, greenkeepers can control weeds, especially another grass called annual bluegrass, with Roundup.
Bob Harriman, executive vice-president for biotechnology at Scotts, based in Marysville, Ohio, said that the new grass would solve a key problem of golf course management. “Creeping bentgrass has an exquisite biology for golf. It is a low-growing grass that can be mown down to a tenth of an inch,” he said. “The drawback is weeds. It gets infested with annual bluegrass, which is almost impossible to get rid of without weeding by hand. Our solution is to introduce herbicide tolerance, so it can be successfully sprayed.”
The first trial courses in America were planted with the seed last year. British golf courses are unlikely to be able to plant GM seed so soon: there is a moratorium on new GM organisms, and experts believe that the grass is unlikely to receive regulatory approval for at least a decade.
Andy Newell, head of turf biology at the Sports Turf Research Institute in Bingley, West Yorkshire, which advises the Royal and Ancient Golf Club on grasses, said that there could be unpredictable consequences. “A herbicide-tolerant grass would certainly be useful to the greenkeeper, but only until it gets into weedy grasses. Then it becomes a nightmare.”
Critics of GM crops said that the development was unnecessary and irresponsible. “There are many, many species of grass that pollinate one another, and so the potential for genetic escape is considerable,” Pete Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said. “Also, though people and farm animals won’t eat this grass, we don’t know what the effects on the wild animals and birds that do live in the area would be.”
Dr Harriman said there were no known weedy varieties of bentgrass, making it impossible for the herbicide tolerance trait to cross into natural plants and create superweeds.
Greens, tees and fairways at the trial courses have been seeded with a strain of GM grass that provides the truest of playing surfaces, and is also cheap and easy for greenkeepers to maintain. The development, by the American seed company Scotts, will make top-quality grass available to ordinary golf clubs for the first time, allowing them to produce the fast, smooth greens that usually only championship courses can afford.
Environmental campaigners say that the planting is an unnecessary and frivolous application of biotechnology that puts wildlife at risk without any serious benefit.
The grass, which should be commercially available in America within two years, is a version of creeping bentgrass, a variety that is accepted as one of the finest surfaces for golf. It is used in its natural form at courses such as Augusta, Georgia, home of the Masters, and Loch Lomond in Scotland.
Creeping bentgrass usually makes for an extremely high-maintenance, if high-quality, lawn. It is very susceptible to weeds and weedkiller, and must be tended by hand for the best results. It is beyond the means of most clubs. The GM variety carries a bacterial gene that confers resistance to a herbicide made by Monsanto called Roundup, or glyphosphate. As a result, greenkeepers can control weeds, especially another grass called annual bluegrass, with Roundup.
Bob Harriman, executive vice-president for biotechnology at Scotts, based in Marysville, Ohio, said that the new grass would solve a key problem of golf course management. “Creeping bentgrass has an exquisite biology for golf. It is a low-growing grass that can be mown down to a tenth of an inch,” he said. “The drawback is weeds. It gets infested with annual bluegrass, which is almost impossible to get rid of without weeding by hand. Our solution is to introduce herbicide tolerance, so it can be successfully sprayed.”
The first trial courses in America were planted with the seed last year. British golf courses are unlikely to be able to plant GM seed so soon: there is a moratorium on new GM organisms, and experts believe that the grass is unlikely to receive regulatory approval for at least a decade.
Andy Newell, head of turf biology at the Sports Turf Research Institute in Bingley, West Yorkshire, which advises the Royal and Ancient Golf Club on grasses, said that there could be unpredictable consequences. “A herbicide-tolerant grass would certainly be useful to the greenkeeper, but only until it gets into weedy grasses. Then it becomes a nightmare.”
Critics of GM crops said that the development was unnecessary and irresponsible. “There are many, many species of grass that pollinate one another, and so the potential for genetic escape is considerable,” Pete Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said. “Also, though people and farm animals won’t eat this grass, we don’t know what the effects on the wild animals and birds that do live in the area would be.”
Dr Harriman said there were no known weedy varieties of bentgrass, making it impossible for the herbicide tolerance trait to cross into natural plants and create superweeds.
Times spotter
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-301523,00.html
Comments
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Genetic Engineering is safe!
21.05.2002 08:53
In all honesty, I'd rather eat genetically modified foods then their inferior natural alternatives for the simple reason that plant and animal species evolved through an ad mixture of natural selection and then through selective breeding at the hands of human agriculturalists.
Now we have the ability to say 'what attributes would be preferential in X species' and then through enginerring the DNA of the natural species, code for those prefered attributes... well its something we SHOULD be doing.
We can now control our own evolution and destiny and this is a new and exciting science. Those that oppose it are just naive people that dont understand the sciece behind GM or have been brainwashed by marxists and socialists who are opposed to anything carried out by the privat sector.
What GM trials boil down to really, is an excuse to indirectly attack large corporations like monsanto, whilst masking this with the idea you are ' benefiting society' to gain public sympathy for your pseudocause thats primarily just a cover. Its a rather crafty way of avoiding prosecution too, getting the majority of the cattle that we have for citizens to support anti GM demo's
Mike
e-mail:
mjpann@essex.ac.uk
you are joking?
21.05.2002 11:23
johnny_boy
is Sarcasm dead?
21.05.2002 11:50
Mike
e-mail:
mjpann@essex.ac.uk
Bottom Line
21.05.2002 13:33
- Phil Angell, Monsanto's Director of Corporate Communications,
New York Times 10/25/98
Profiteer
essex student mike is fascinating!
21.05.2002 16:51
A more qualified statement would be that much current knowledge is uncertain. As with many questions, we simply do not yet know.
Firstly, to say as Mike does that we can "through enginerring (sic) the DNA of the natural species, code for those prefered attributes" is a bit of a myth. (I know mike is a computer scientist, so he presumes that molecular biologists can simply write "code" for plants!)
Instead, genes are inserted in quite a random way. Scientists then have to check that they have gone where they want through using anti-biotic resistance markers.
Furthermore, recent research questions the dogma that a particular plant charactersistic can be reduced to a particular gene. The whole organism plays a role - and the inserted gene may behave differently in different plants.
The term 'junk DNA' refers to a huge amount of material that scientists simply do not yet understand - but it has been admitted that the insertion of this (as yet) mysterious substence in different genetic engineering experiments can make a dramatic difference. As one pioneer geneticist said - we are not engaged in 'genetic engineering'- it is still 'genetic tinkering'.
Secondly, beyond the uncertainties of molecular biology, there is even greater uncertainty about the ecological impacts - which involves complex multi-dimensional interactions. These can not be isolated in a laboritory and measured and repeated, and occur over timescales way beyond the career span of one scientist.
So given the relatively primative stage of our scientific knowledge, it would be irresponsible to allow the mass planting of GM crops over whole swathes of the earth. Once this is done, it is impossible to recall. Other prototype technology can be withdrawn when faults are discovered.
Already, new and better techniques than 'gene-splicing' are being discovered. Therefore the herbicide resistant crops being promoted by the likes of Monsanto and Aventis (soon to be Bayer) represent a primative prototype. The first GM plant was only developed around 1983. Within a decade, Aventis and Monsanto had brought to the mass market crops engineered to be resistant to their own brand herbicide. These form part of a patented package of seeds and herbicide, sold as one. It is clearly profit, not scientific reason, which is the driving force here, a veritable 'genetic goldrush'. The evidence from America is that this technology increases farmers costs, and encourages them to use more, not less, herbicide. The GM crops that may help the poor are a long way off.
Aventis's herbicide resistant crops growing in some fields in North Essex, near where our friend Mike is a student, have been rejected by local villagers. These are by and large well informed people. Theye are also quite 'middle class' and often small 'c' consevative.
On the other hand Mike who rants breathlessly about how "We can now control our own evolution and destiny and this is a new and exciting science" exhibits all the promethean hubris of a 1950's Soviet textbook. All this as part of an attempted polemic against 'Marxism'. How amusing :)
But right wing students have always been good entertainment, with their mixture of ignorance and arrogance.
informed observer
Michael has been misled
21.05.2002 17:17
Michael
It seems that you have been misled about the accuracy of genetic modification. Current genetic modification techniques involve not just one gene, but several, introducing unpredictable sequences into the target genome:
Monsanto seeds contain 'rogue' DNA
Furthermore, evidence from the human genome project within the past year has shown that the previous theory of 1 gene=1 trait is not correct. So, if you change one gene, there is no way of predicting which multiple aspects of the organism will be impacted.
You might also consider that GM foods have never been through safety testing, so there's no way of knowing whether or not they'll cause you harm.
Hope this helps.
regards
Marcus Williamson
Editor, Genetically Modified Food - UK and World News
I can't help laughing when I see the anti GM protesters here in England dressing up in their white jump suits with respirators and pulling up GM Crop Trials. The strike me as the same sort of lunatics that join CND and protest about the 'threat from the atom'.
In all honesty, I'd rather eat genetically modified foods then their inferior natural alternatives for the simple reason that plant and animal species evolved through an ad mixture of natural selection and then through selective breeding at the hands of human agriculturalists.
Now we have the ability to say 'what attributes would be preferential in X species' and then through enginerring the DNA of the natural species, code for those prefered attributes... well its something we SHOULD be doing.
We can now control our own evolution and destiny and this is a new and exciting science. Those that oppose it are just naive people that dont understand the sciece behind GM or have been brainwashed by marxists and socialists who are opposed to anything carried out by the privat sector.
What GM trials boil down to really, is an excuse to indirectly attack large corporations like monsanto, whilst masking this with the idea you are ' benefiting society' to gain public sympathy for your pseudocause thats primarily just a cover. Its a rather crafty way of avoiding prosecution too, getting the majority of the cattle that we have for citizens to support anti GM demo's
Marcus
GM Mike
21.05.2002 22:42
GM Mike
Dr Greenbaum
Genitically modified golf courses planted in US, more chemicals?
02.03.2004 11:42
I would tend to agree, that we don't know how GM grass affect the environment. How could we? It is an experement in progress.
I am concerned, more with the wide spread use of Roundup. This new grass will only put more Roundup into the environment. Most of the time, it may be used responsibly. I am concerned that the more commonly ,it is used, the more times it will be relesed into the environment as a consequence. As it stands it is used sparinly, to spot kill weeds, at golf courses, because it kill most grasses. If GM grass, is tolerent to it, it could be used more often and more broadly. If if is used on a continuing basis, the oportunities for it's improper use, such as too close to rain or watering times, will increase. IT takes a lot of water to keep the golf courses in America green.
This practice will put more chemicals into the environment. And why? Do we really need to increase the usage of herbasides for recreational use? Golf is just that , recreation. There is already a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi, caused by algricultural runoff of pestisides and herbasides. I see no benifit, execept for the grounds keepers and the pleasure of the minority, who golf.
Developing plants that require less herbaside, was the original goal, of the development of type of plant. Seems the expanded use of Roundup is the end result.
I would hope the future of the envirionment is more important than green grass at golf courses.
Robbie in Indy (Indianapolis)