nouvel OGM : résistant aux herbicides Dicamba

Published online: 24 May 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070521-10 / http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070521/full/070521-10.html

Geneticists create 'next generation' of GM crops

Soya beans and cotton could be treated with alternative herbicide.

Heidi Ledford

Dicamba-resistant crops could give soya farmers more options to beat weeds. Brett Hampton / University of Nebraska Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources

Researchers have created what could be the next generation of transgenic crops by inserting a gene for herbicide resistance from a bacterium into plants. The new crops 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.

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. The researchers have now created transgenic soya beans, tomatoes and other broad-leaved crops that are resistant to this herbicide - a development that will expand the range of dicamba's uses.

Dicamba lasts only a few months in soil, and rarely contaminates water contamination is rare. The chemical itself is stable, but it is quickly devoured by hungry hordes of microbes living in the soil.