How do the design of monitoring and control strategies affect the chance of detecting and containing transgenic weeds?

Abstract

Monitoring is a compromise response to environmental debates Environmentalists are concerned with the risks associated with transgenic crops, whereas many promoters of biotechnology can see only benefits [1]. As with many such debates, the solution is a compromise, which may satisfy neither side. One key to making both parties agree to such a compromise can be an effective monitoring program. From an environmentalist’s perspective monitoring can serve to alert the public that there is indeed an ecological problem, in spite of our best hopes. From a biotechnologist’s point of view, monitoring can substantiate that no ecological problems have been forthcoming, and that thus regulations should be relaxed. Monitoring needs to be sensitive enough that it triggers an alarm before it is too late. On the other hand, monitoring must not be so unrealistically sensitive to the point that it could never yield a verdict of safety. In this paper we explore the promise and limitations of monitoring for escaped transgenic plants that are on the verge of becoming serious weed problems. More specifically, the ecological risk at which our monitoring program is aimed is simply the establishment and spread of a novel plant. Although this is a simplistic “risk”, it might well be a practical target for transgenic monitoring, since without spread and proliferation transgenes are unlikely to produce substantial impacts.