As transgenes in the cultivated crop change, traits could accumulate in the weeds. For instance, a weed could develop a resistance to 3 or 4 herbicides as it acquired genes from consecutive generations of crops over many years. It s hard to worry about a problem that may take 5 or 10 years to develop, admitted Snow. We re trying to project what could happen or will happen in the future. That s why the area of crop transgenes is so controversial, she continued.
Some people don t even want to think about it, and other people think it s a disaster.
I think the truth lies somewhere in-between. Snow said that she and her colleagues would have to study oilseed rape and Brassica rapa in the field to fully gauge the benefits of herbicide resistance in the weed. I don t like to paint this as an emergency, or as a disaster waiting to happen. I just think it s important to understand what we re doing when we create transgenic crops, and delay the possible negative consequences, if not prevent them in the first place, said Snow. One solution might be for scientists to insert genetically-engineered traits into the DNA of the cytoplasm of plant cells, instead of the nucleus.