In 1990, when the first GM herbicide tolerant and Bt crops were created, the expectations were high – too high, as we know now. Bt and herbicide tolerance were predicted by the makers to be either out of trade and replaced by custom-tailored plants by 2000 or just a general background of all crop varieties. In reality, we now find ourselves still stuck with the same first generation of traits i...

Herbicides that bind specifically to Photosystem II greatly increased ammonia liberation by a heterotrophic cyanobacterium incubated with methionine sulfoximine anaerobically in light. Comparison of cells incubated under argon and nitrogen indicated that about one-half of the liberated ammonia came from endogenous sources, as well as from dinitrogen fixation. Chromatography of cell extracts rev...

Weedy plant species that have evolved resistance to herbicides due to enhanced metabolic capacity to detoxify herbicides (metabolic resistance) are a major issue. Metabolic herbicide resistance in weedy plant species first became evident in the 1980s in Australia (in Lolium rigidum) and the United Kingdom (in Alopecurus myosuroides) and is now increasingly recognized in several crop-weed specie...

Phalaris brachystachys is a common and troublesome weed in winter cereals in Mediterranean countries. A deterministic model was developed to simulate P. brachystachys seedbank dynamics in the wheat-sunflower rotation, a commonly practiced cropping system in southern Spain, under different herbicide-based management scenarios: no herbicide application, full herbicide dose (standard rate) and two...

BACKGROUND When applied at the correct plant stage and dose, herbicides are highly toxic to plants. At reduced, low herbicide doses (below the recommended dose) plants can survive and display continuous and quantitative variation in dose-survival responses. Recurrent (directional) selection studies can reveal whether such a phenotypic variation in plant survival response to low herbicide dose i...

Herbicide resistant weeds are becoming increasingly common, threatening global food security. Here, we present BrIFAR: a new model system for the functional study of mechanisms of herbicide resistance in grass weeds. We have developed a large collection of Brachypodium accessions, the BrI collection, representing a wide range of habitats. Wide screening of the responses of the accessions to fou...

Hybridization of Brassica napus L. (oilseed rape) and Raphanus raphanistrum L. (wild radish) has been demonstrated, and may be the first step towards introgression of transgenes in this wild relative. If wild radish were to display a new adaptive advantage by expressing the transgene, this could modify the ecological balance of species within the agro-ecosystem. To determine if transgenes remai...

The uptake of the triazine herbicides, atrazine and terbutryn, was determined for two freshwater photosynthetic microorganisms, the green microalga Chlorella vulgaris and the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus. An extremely rapid uptake of both pesticides was recorded, although uptake rate was lower for the cyanobacterium, mainly for atrazine. Other parameters related to the herbicide bioco...

Nine mycorrhizal fungi and free-living saprophytic microorganisms were tested for their ability to degrade two chlorinated aromatic herbicides at two herbicide concentrations and three nitrogen concentrations. Radiolabelled 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-s-triazine (atrazine) were used as substrates at concentrations of 1 and 4 mM. After 8 week...

Acetolactate synthase (ALS), the first enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of leucine, valine, and isoleucine, i s the biochemical target of different herbicides. To investigate the effects of repression of ALS activity through antisense gene expression we cloned an ALS gene from potato (Solanum fuberosum L. cv Désirée), constructed a chimeric antisense gene under control of the cauliflower mosa...