Stuartbirdan2
Diamond Member
- Sep 6, 2020
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- 9,203
Did biotechnology cause HR weeds?
Herbicide-resistant weeds did not begin with herbicide-resistant crops; resistant weeds have been evolving in conventional crop cultivars worldwide from selection pressure placed on them from repeated use of herbicides.
A plant does not evolve resistance because herbicides cause a genetic change in the plant that makes it resistant. Rather, a few plants with natural resistance to the herbicide survive an application of the herbicide, and as those plants reproduce and each generation is exposed to the herbicide, the number of resistant plants in the population increases until they dominate the population of susceptible plants.
The wide-scale use of any single herbicidal SOA contributes to the evolution of resistance to that SOA, and the unprecedented scale of glyphosate use in glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops has clearly contributed to the number of GR weeds identified in recent years.
Herbicide-resistant weeds did not begin with herbicide-resistant crops; resistant weeds have been evolving in conventional crop cultivars worldwide from selection pressure placed on them from repeated use of herbicides.
A plant does not evolve resistance because herbicides cause a genetic change in the plant that makes it resistant. Rather, a few plants with natural resistance to the herbicide survive an application of the herbicide, and as those plants reproduce and each generation is exposed to the herbicide, the number of resistant plants in the population increases until they dominate the population of susceptible plants.
The wide-scale use of any single herbicidal SOA contributes to the evolution of resistance to that SOA, and the unprecedented scale of glyphosate use in glyphosate-resistant (GR) crops has clearly contributed to the number of GR weeds identified in recent years.