I know that many residents of Washington were extremely concerned to learn about the discovery of glyphosate-tolerant wheat in an Oregon farm field this spring. WSU’s Agricultural Research Center released a news update today indicating that the glyphosate-tolerant gene was NOT discovered in any of the WSU breeding lines (commercialized or in development) nor in other tested lines developed by regional universities and companies. While it’s still not clear how this incident happened, this is certainly great news for the region. Also, I think it is really important to note how rapidly and extensively our breeding programs and administration responded to this concern to protect the interests of the state and our wheat producers.
More detail is available here.
Comments
While this effort appears comprehensive, does it represent a scientifically valid sample of all of the wheat in storage in the pnw? Did any researchers get off campus? The article said tests and interviews were conducted with hundreds of farmers. Was this a representative sample of producers? Was everyone interviewed also tested? If you were interviewed, but not tested, how could you know?