permaculture

["Emily A. Noble" <guinep@theriver.com>]

Title: FW: Soy test

Brazil recommends simple test for transgentic soy
BRAZIL: May 29, 2000
SAO PAULO - Some soybeans, paper towels and a few drops of biotech weed
killer - cost: $2 - have given Brazil's soy industry a cheap alternative
to $500 DNA scans to test for genetically modified material in its
soybeans.
The Agriculture Ministry's research arm, Embrapa, said exporters of
Brazil's soybeans may avoid the expensive tests to prove to discerning
buyers that their soybeans are free of genetically modified (GM) strains
with a simpler method.Soybeans placed in paper towels moistened with a
diluted solution of herbicide designed for GM soybeans will reveal
whether they are conventional or GM seeds, Embrapa said."Once the beans
germinate in the diluted solution, the transgenic seeds will have normal
root development but the conventional soybeans will not develop any
roots," Embrapa researcher Warley Marcos do Nascimento said Friday.
Planting any genetically-tampered grain is technically illegal in
Brazil. But farmers in Rio Grande do Sul state have planted super-seeds
from the U.S. Monsanto Co. biotechnology unit of Pharmacia Corp.,
smuggled in from Argentina where they are legal.The presence of
transgenic beans in Brazil's third largest soybean state may throw the
industry's sales to health-conscious European buyers in jeopardy. Some
foreign markets have prized Brazilian products because they are GM-free.
But Brazil has not yet developed standardss for testing GM soybeans.
Embrapa is hoping that the cheap, simple method will become an
industry-wide litmus test to improve the confidence of foreign buyers
that Brazilian soy is GM-free.The test has a margin of error of about 5
percent, and some DNA testing companies are saying the test is imprecise
and primitive. But Nascimento said the test is 95 percent reliable,
simple and cheap."The test could be a preliminary screening which should
be reliable enough for European buyers," Nascimento said. Currently,
only Rio Grande do Sul, accounting for 15 percent of the nation's
soybean output, practices systematic GM testing on its beans.
Story by Reese Ewing
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE