By Susan Milius
Sugar beets in French farm fields are less likely to spread their genes to wild relatives by wafting pollen than by releasing seeds that people unintentionally transport, according to a new genetic study. The finding could complicate debates about the threat of gene transfers from genetically modified crops.
Most previous studies of gene escapes have focused on pollen straying far and wide, says Jean-Francois Arnaud of the Université de Lille 1 in France. Arnaud and his colleagues decided to look at seeds as well as pollen as vehicles of gene transfer.