Researchers develop new generation herbicide-resistant transgenic crop

26 May 2007

Mumbai: Researchers in the US have created a new generation of transgenic crops by inserting a gene for herbicide resistance from a bacterium into plants which could help to combat the spread of resistance to other commonly used herbicides.

The approach is not a new one – many farmers already grow crops that have been engineered to resist the herbicide glyphosate. But the new plants are resistant to a compound called dicamba, and could offer farmers an alternative in areas where glyphosate-resistant weeds have become a problem, Nature magazine said.

Dicamba, which kills broadleaf weeds but spares grasses, has been used for decades to protect fields planted with corn, a member of the grass family.

Researchers led by Don Weeks at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln isolated a gene from Pseudomonas maltophilia that is responsible for the breakdown of dicamba.

They then transferred this gene into tobacco, soyabeans, tomatoes and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In every case, the plants became resistant to dicamba, the researchers report in this week''s Science.

The researchers have thus created transgenic soyabeans, tomatoes and other broad-leaved crops that are resistant to this herbicide – a development that will expand the range of dicamba''s uses, the report said.