www.czu.cz ; www.usab-tm.ro ; www.raupp.info

French scientist Jean Masson carefully unlocks the gate of a heavily
protected open-air enclosure. Behind the fence and security cameras there
are no wild animals or convicts, just 70 vines, September 2005 by Kerstin
Gehmlich.

In the heart of the picturesque Alsace wine region, researchers have
planted France's only genetically modified vines in the hope of finding a
way to battle the damaging "court-noue" virus afflicting a third of the
country's vines.

The modified plants will not grow grapes or yield any wine, and scientists
at the state-financed National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA),
which is conducting the experiment, say it is safe.

"The environmental risk is nil," said Masson, head of INRA in the eastern
town of Colmar. "We have taken all safety measures."

But many local winegrowers fear the plants will contaminate their vineyards
and ruin the reputation of France's wine sector.

"It makes me angry because this is imposed on everyone without us being
informed about the risk," Pierre-Paul Humbrecht, a maker of bio wines, said
in his vineyard just a few km away from the open-air experiment.

"If there's a problem, it concerns us all. We fear for our vines."

In France, resistance against genetically modified food is fierce. Farmer
and environmentalist Jose Bove has shot to national fame for ripping up
modified crops.

INRA stopped its first tests on genetically modified vines in the Champagne
region in 1999 following protests. After years of talks with locals and
winemakers, Masson said his researchers had now set up enough safety
measures to satisfy critics.

They dug a hole of the size of a basketball court, put in a cover to shield
the natural ground and planted the contested vines on soil from outside. The
plants are also surrounded by some 1,500 normal vines.

The prison-style fence was a request by environmentalists, who wanted to
prevent animals and human intruders from carrying parts of the plants
outside the enclosure, Masson said.

Damaging virus

Masson said INRA conducted tests only in the lower part of the vine, the
rootstock, which did not carry any grapes.

Almost all French winegrowers have used separate rootstocks since the
phylloxera pest nearly wiped out the European wine industry in the late
1800s.

In response to the tiny louse, which attacks the root system of vines and
was accidentally brought to Europe from America in 1860, European winemakers
imported resistant American rootstocks and grafted their vines onto them.

INRA says no genetic information can pass from this rootstock into the
plant's upper part -- which grows the grapes. But to ease fears that a
modified plant could one day yield wine, the researchers will strip the vine
of any blossoms.

"We don't want to produce grapes. We want to answer the scientific question
of whether this transgenic (genetically modified) root can lead to the plant
developing durable resistance to this virus," said INRA's Olivier Lemaire,
who is in charge of the project.

Winemakers agree the court-noue virus is causing havoc but they disagree
over whether INRA's research is needed.

"In the long-term it is a very dangerous virus," said 80-year-old wine
grower Jean Hugel, whose family has run a vineyard in the small town of
Riquewihr for more than 300 years.

"The end result is that the blossoming doesn't go well and you don't have
any crop."

So far, winemakers have had to battle the virus with very toxic pesticides
or by letting the soil rest for years.

"If they find a way to get rid of the virus on the American root, with
assurances that it does not pass into the European grafted-on vine, it would
be a great, great success. You have to try," Hugel said.

But fellow winemaker Frederic Geschickt, bringing in grapes from his
vineyard, said he would rather live with the virus than accept the danger of
genetically modified plants.

"You should tear these vines down," he said. Genetic tests on vines already
exist in places such as the United States but the French case was special,
he said.

"French wines are already subject to strong market pressure. Over recent
years, competition from New World wines has grown. The only solution for
French wines is to affirm their particularity and their difference," he
said.

Genetic tests risked making French wines uniform, he said.

New world threat

The wine sector -- a pillar of French life that provides 75,000 jobs -- has
been hit hard by competition from "New World" rivals such as Australia and
Chile.

France and Italy are the world's top winemakers with the former accounting
for around one fifth of world production, but New World countries have been
increasing their market share.

Masson said the scientists did not want to market their test results,
pointing out that scientific publication would be the ultimate goal when the
experiment ends in four years time.

But environmentalists fear the case sets a precedent.

"They want to test to what extent we will resist this," said Henri Stoll,
Green Party mayor in the small town of Kaysersberg which is surrounded by
vineyards.

"If we don't, something else will come up. We will have genetically modified
wine and a genetically modified society."

But the grey-haired Hugel said he believed winemakers were too intelligent
to ever make genetically modified wine.

"One hundred percent of a wine's quality is in the grapes," he said. "We
have not seen any miracles in 370 years."

[today.reuters.co.uk]

------------------------------------------
Posted to Phorum via PhorumMail