Dangerous Liaisons?
Subtitle: When Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Relatives (Syntheses in Ecology and Evolution)
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: September 24, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780801874055
Subjects: Genetic engineering; Genetics (non-medical); Plant reproduction & propagation; Life Sciences - Horticulture; Risk assessment; Science; Technology & Industrial Arts; Transgenic plants; Science/Mathematics; Agriculture - Agronomy; Life Sciences - Biology - General; Medical / Ethics; Life Sciences - Botany; Plant diversity conservation; Pollination
First sentence: A warm, golden afternoon in the south of France is a perfect time and place for romance-especially for a wild beet.
Description: "In Dangerous Liaisons? geneticist Norman C. Ellstrand examines these and other questions. He begins with basic information about the natural hybridization process. He then describes what we now know about hybridization between the world's most important crops - such as wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans - and their wild relatives. Such hybridization, Ellstrand explains, is not rare, and it has occasionally produced a substantial impact. In some cases, the result was problematic weeds. In others, crop genes have diluted natural diversity to the point that wild populations of certain rare species were absorbed into the gene pool of the more common crop, bringing the wild species to the brink of extinction." "Ellstrand concludes with a look to the future. Will engineered crops pose a greater threat than traditional crops? If so, can gene flow and hybridization be managed to control the escape of engineered genes? This book will appeal to academics, policy makers, students, and all with an interest in environmental issues."--Jacket.