Future Impact of Crops with Modified Herbicide Resistance

Abstract

The development of crop cultivars with resistance to selected herbicides has the potential to impact environmental quality, food safety, consumers, and crop producers in either a positive or negative manner. The technology that makes it possible to develop herbicide-resistant crops is neither good nor bad, it is rather how the products of this technology are used that will determine whether or not the introduction of herbicide-resistant crops is ultimately a good or bad decision. The introduction of herbicide-resistant crops will have diverse impacts leading to redundancy, diversity, and confusion in crop production systems. Often the introduction of herbicide-resistant cultivars will have the same impact on cropping systems as the introduction of a new herbicide that has the same mode-of-action and use pattern of herbicides already in use. This may add diversity of herbicide options for a given crop but will cause redundancy of product use over several years. This redundancy could lead to weed resistance and water quality concerns. Confusion at the user level will exist because not all cultivars of a crop will be resistant to the herbicide; this could be the major deterrent to widespread adoption of herbicide-resistant crops. Steps must be taken to provide information to crop producers that will insure that herbicide-resistant crops are used effectively and safely. Weed scientists will determine whether this technology will be used to improve food safety, water quality, crop production systems, and farmer profitability or have a negative impact on agriculture and the whole of society.