Bayer off the hook in NSW canola trial

NSW Agriculture Minister Ian MacDonald has advised Bayer CropScience that it will not have to destroy a trial crop of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant canola near Wagga, despite the discovery of a small number of canola plants in the surrounding buffer zone.

McDonald told Bayer that the state's GM advisory council, which is supervising the trial, had determined that the 'volunteer' plants were almost certainly non-GM.

Bayer's InVigor herbicide-tolerant GM crop is a hybrid, with a predicted yield advantage of 10-15 per cent over non-GM varieties currently grown in Australia. It is said to be more vigorous, and has larger seed pods.

Bayer is in technical breach of the trial's protocols, which required all canola plants to be excluded from a buffer zone separating the GM trial crop from the nearest non-GM commercial canola crops more than 1km away.

Bayer's general manager of bioscience, Susie O'Neill, said testing showed none of the volunteer plants, which have now been destroyed, were GM.

They were almost certainly vagrants from a 20m swathe of non-GM canola planted around the perimeter of the 4.5-hectare GM crop to trap wind-blown GM pollen.

O'Neill said research has shown that most canola pollen travels no more than 1m from the parent plant. As originally approved by the federal GM watchdog, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator, the Wagga trial required no pollen-trap crop, because the nearest non-GM canola crop was more than 1km away.

O'Neill said Bayer decided to adopt a "boots and braces" approach and plant the pollen-trap crop anyway.

When the OGTR formally approved the commercial production of GM herbicide-tolerant canolas in Australia last July, responsibility for supervision of the Wagga trial transferred to NSW's GM advisory council.

The state government imposed a legislated, four-year moratorium on all new GM commercial crops while experts explored the marketing and trade implications of GM canola. The moratorium will not end until 2006.

The council's report to the minister concluded that, despite the breach, the risk of any GM material escaping from the Wagga site was negligible.

The Minister has advised Bayer that stricter management guidelines and reporting procedures will be required in future. The GM crop must now be inspected twice as often.

The minister told the ABC today that he would be "looking for very strict standards in any research trial".

If Bayer had been forced to destroy the GM trial, the resulting publicity and political reaction may have compromised its recent application to the NSW government to grow enough GM canola under containment in NSW to fill one hold of a grain ship.

The trial shipment would allow the company and the industry to verify that GM canola could be grown, segregated, shipped and marketed successfully, with no adverse impact on conventional canola exports.

O'Neill said the OGTR's approval had confirmed that GM canola involved no health or environmental issues different from convention canola. "The only outstanding issues are market access and trade, and the trial is the only way to move the debate forward," she said.

"It should also help to verify the scientific data showing very low rates of pollen flow between GM and conventional crops."