Roadside Biotech

The canola plant is a biotech crop that is also becoming a weed — and one that may be resistant to common herbicides, reports the New York Times' Green blog. A graduate student at the University of Arkansas, Meredith Schafer, sampled canola plants growing along 3,000 miles of roads in North Dakota and found that about 80 percent of them were genetically engineered: some were Roundup Ready, others Liberty Link, and two were resistant to both. The plants are thought to get to the roadside by seeds blowing over from fields or off of trucks carrying the crops. "Because about 90 percent of the U.S. and Canadian canola crop is biotech, it is reasonable to expect a survey of roadside canola to show similar levels of biotech plants," said Tom Nickson, the environmental policy leader at Monsanto in a statement.