Posts Tagged: GMO

UC Riverside scientists criticize GMO study

One Friday afternoon in 2007, two UC Riverside scientists went out for a beer after work and comiserated over a research report published in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"I don't think there's been another case where I've seen him so really ticked off," said insect pathologist Brian Federici of his colleague plant biotechnologist Alan McHughen.

Federici said he was also annoyed by the article, which he called "bad science."

The scientists' frustration led to the creation of a rebuttal letter that was eventually signed by the duo and 10 other scientists and published in the January 2008 edition of PNAS. This letter and other dissent from scientists around the country is still fresh enough to elicit a detailed account of the controversy in the current issue of Nature.

The article in question, "Toxins in transgenic crop byproducts may affect headwater stream ecosystems," said that, in laboratory studies, caddis-fly larvae that fed only on Bt maize debris grew half as fast and died at more than twice the rate as those that ate debris from conventional maize.

The Nature article, titled "Battlefield," includes these comments:

"The work is so bad an undergrad would have done a better job. I'm convinced the authors knew it had flaws." - University of Georgia crop geneticist Wayne Parrott

The author's use of evidence "arguably amounts to investigator misconduct." - Henry Miller, research fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.

"They absolutely went too far." - Randy Schekman, editor-in-chief of PNAS.

"When bad science is used to justify bad public policies, we all lose." -UCR's McHughen.

The authors of the PNAS article stand by their work. "We believe our study was scientifically sound although many questions on the topic remain to be answered," they wrote in an e-mail to Nature.

"Battlefield" was published in Nature.

UC ANR news popping up in many places

To close out this short Thanksgiving week, there are a number of UC Ag and Natural Resources hits in the media:

Capitol Press covered an agritourism seminar held recently in Stockton and developed a detailed article with much information drawn from a presentation by Holly George, UCCE's Sierra and Plumas county livestock and natural resources advisor.

Besides the more conventional agritourism ventures - pumpkin patches, corn mazes, wineries and U-pick operations - "serious" farms can benefit from the trend by opening their farms to the public for activities such as hunting, bird watching and hiking, he said.

TradingMarkets.com picked up a Lake County Record Bee story about a contentious meeting of the county board of supervisors. The board is planning to form a committee to hammer out the details of an ordinance concerning genetically engineered agricultural crops.

According to the story, the farm bureau recommended that UCCE farm advisor Greg Giusti be appointed to the committee, but local organic farmer Phil Murphy was opposed, calling Giusti "extremely biased" for having written papers against regulation of GE agriculture.

The Produce News reported that the Center for Produce Safety received $500,000 in new research funding aimed to help the produce industry gain a better understanding of ways to prevent contamination during production.

According to the story, the center was launched in response to the 2006 E. coli outbreak and funded with $2 million from the Produce Marketing Association and another $2 million from Taylor Farms. CDFA and UC also pledged financial resources for the center, which is housed at UC Davis.

Worldwatch Institute ran a story about the downside of drip irrigation. Drip irrigation has been touted for its water-saving efficiency. In traditional flood or sprinkler irrigation, the water not absorbed by crops seeps into the ground and recharges aquifers. As drip irrigation becomes more common, recharge of groundwater may be less frequent, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Blake Sandon was one of many experts across the nation interviewed for the story.

He said California has become the world's No. 1 producer of almonds over the past 30 years, due in part to the increased use of drip irrigation. Almond farmers have required some 15 to 20 percent more water, but average yields nearly doubled.

"You cannot produce high-yield crops without a fairly significant input of water," Sanden was quoted. "In the end of the day, hungry people will win the game."

 

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Happy Thanksgiving! The ANR News Blog will be back with more about ANR appearances in the news media on Dec. 1.

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