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SSP Project Summary: |
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Neil McRoberts, Scottish Agricultural College
It is very easy to predict in a general way that herbicide-resistant GM crops will induce changes in the flora associated with crop production. The herbicides used with GM oilseed rape impose a severe control over weed growth, but are more effective against some species than others. Basic ecological theory suggests that if the repeated use of such herbicides tends to kill off some species quicker than others, those that are better able to survive the chemical will be at a selective advantage and may come to dominate the weed flora. Additional long-term complexities may arise through the evolution of weeds that are resistant to the herbicide, and the "escape" of the trans-gene from the crop to weed relatives by interbreeding. In both these cases again, weeds with resistance to the herbicide will be at a selective advantage and may dominate the weed flora. Considering the landscape at a regional or national level, the GM crop may become a weed itself and modelling this process for the purposes of prediction would be of considerable political and public interest.
SAC is currently undertaking a series of research projects commissioned by the Scottish Office to examine and model the impact of GM oilseed rape on the weed flora at sites where GM oilseed rape is being grown on a trial basis. Since any trials conducted will be relatively short term, and since the public require predictions of the likely long-term impact of GM crops on the environment, a modelling approach appears to be the only option for providing the "answers" that are required now. While SAC's research did not originally include plans to use a parallel computing environment for the modelling work, the potential complexity of the system being examined may mean that translating the work to the parallel computing environment would be beneficial.
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