Scientists Link GM Crop Weed Killer to Powerful Fungus
by
"Glyphosate-treated
wheat appeared to have higher levels of Fusarium head
blight (a toxic fungal disease) than wheat fields where no glyphosate
had been applied." said Scientist Myriam
Fernandez of the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre in Swift
Current,
According to Dr. Harvey
Glick, head of Monsanto's Scientific Affairs, who remains critical: "It
appears to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey looking at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might be related.
So, from what I can gather, that was not a cause and effect. It's just that
they saw in the study area some fields that had higher levels of Fusarium, for whatever reason, and then they looked at a
list of factors that might be related and one of them was there was Roundup
used in those fields the previous year.
Maybe, but, over the last two decades, several
scientists from
Monsanto's Dr. Harvey Glick disagrees:
"Roundup is almost 30 years old and scientists have been looking at all aspects
of its use for at least that long. So there is a tremendous amount of
information available. And that is why there is such a high level of confidence
that the use of Roundup, based on all of this earlier work, does not have any
negative impacts on soil
microbes... And a lot
of it has been published."
Dr. Kremer's ongoing research deals with the
effect of glyphosate-fusarium relationship on
soybeans, not just regular soybeans, but "Roundup Ready" soybeans
also. Monsanto has been producing a series of genetically-engineered
"Roundup Ready" seed stock for various crops including, cotton,
soybean, wheat and corn to be used exclusively with their successful glyphosate weedkiller Roundup.
"Roundup Ready" crops are themselves unaffected by the Roundup weedkiller, which will kill all any competing plants such
as weeds in the same area. Because they are genetically-engineered, they have
not found easy acceptance in many countries outside the
Dr. Kremer found that in his "Roundup
Ready" soybean experiments that "Glyphosate
seems to stimulate Fusarium in the roots area of the
plants," to such a degree that he considers the elevation of Fusarium levels to be glyphosate's
"secondary mode of action." While he found enhanced Fusarium colonies in the roots of his plants, which could
potentially reduce the harvest, he did not find it in the harvested soybeans
themselves. Even so, he expressed concern about what this accumulation of Fusarium in the soil could lead to.
Dr. Kremer also noted: "We didn't see
enhancement of Fusarium when other herbicides were
used." However, in the case of "Roundup Ready" crops, Roundup is
to be used exclusively or in combination with other chemicals as a weed killer.
To use other weed killers alone would be a violation of contract.
Thus, if Roundup increases Fusarium
levels, then "Roundup Ready" crops that use Roundup as a weed killer
could become potential disasters, increasing Fusarium
levels in the soil to such critical levels it could produce an epidemic and
move from field to field throughout a wide area.
In a recent article titled "GM cotton
blamed for disease," the Farm Weekly, an Australian publication, predicted
that "up to 90 percent of Australia's cotton belt could be inundated by
the soil borne pathogen Fusarium wilt within the next
decade" due to Roundup Ready cotton.
Fusarium
contamination of cereals, such as the Fusarium Head
Blight (FHB) in wheat and barley that Dr. Fernandez is studying in
When cultured on Petri dishes, Fusarium can display various colours,
often ranging from orange to salmon-coloured, and it
has a varying appearance on different cereals and at different stages of its
life cycle. On wheat and rye it can appear as a chalky white colour; on barley it can appear as black rust, and on oats
it can be black and reddish-orange coloured. Small
amounts of contamination of grains are invisible to the human eye, and chemical
tests have to be done to detect it. Since such tests are at the expense of the
farmer, minute amounts continually enter commercial food products. It is at the
higher levels that it can become a serious problem.
The Fusarium fungus
can produce a range of toxins that are not destroyed in the cooking process
such as vomitoxin, which as its name suggests,
usually produces vomiting and not death, to the more lethal compounds which
include fumonisin, which can cause cancer and birth
defects to the very lethal chemical warfare agent fusariotoxin,
more often referred to as T2 toxin.
During 2000, the US Congress planned to use
the fungus Fusarium as a biological control agent to
kill coca crops in Colombia and another fungus to kill opium poppies in
Afghanistan, but these plans were dropped by then-president Clinton who was
concerned that the unilateral use of a biological agent would be perceived by
the rest of the world as biological warfare. The Andean nations, including
Because of the glyphosate-Fusarium
link,
http://usfumigation.org/Literature/Press_Articles/Scientists%20Link.htm
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