By Paul Gorman

Plans to allow genetically engineered (GE) members of the onion family to
flower in a Canterbury field are supported by the Environmental Risk
Management Authority (Erma).


Crown research institute (CRI) Crop and Food Research wants to plant up to
2.5ha of GE alliums onions, spring onions, leeks and garlic in a securely
contained, undisclosed field in the Lincoln area.

The 10-year research programme, led by Colin Eady, aims to test the GE
plants' tolerance to herbicide and their resistance to fungi, bacteria,
viruses and insect pests, and also efforts to alter their smell, flavour,
sweetness and colour.

Some will be allowed to flower but will be covered with pollination cages to
keep in pollinating insects and keep other insects out. Crop and Food wants
GE seeds to mature in the cages and be harvested before seed dispersal can
occur.

Erma's initial view, based on the application, extra research and public
submissions, is that the planned field trial will have "negligible risk" to
the environment, human health and safety, local Maori and the economy.

It has proposed various controls over the trial, including monitoring to
ensure there is no flowering of the GE alliums outside pollination cages.

GE material escaping from the contained location would "almost certainly not
occur but cannot totally be ruled out", the authority's evaluation said.

Erma received 124 submissions on the proposal. Thirty-four people including
representatives of GE Free New Zealand, the Soil and Health Association of
New Zealand, Federated Farmers, the Sustainability Council, CRI Scion and
Ngai Tahu will present their views at a public hearing in Christchurch on
August 12 to the Erma panel that makes the final decision.

Crop and Food said in its application that one potential outcome of the
trials were alliums with enhanced health benefits.

Another was reducing the exposure of onion industry workers to chemicals and
pesticides currently applied to allium crops.

The field test would be in a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry-approved
contained facility and the ministry would inspect the pollination cages to
ensure no pollen-carrying insects could move through the mesh.

Other controls would ensure cages were placed over flowering plants at least
two weeks before flowers opened and that cages would be fixed to the ground.

Wind pollination was unlikely, the application said.

Christchurch biotechnologist and former Crop and Food scientist Elvira
Dommisse, who worked on early GE onion experiments, said what the
application really meant was because wind pollination was unlikely, Crop and
Food was "not going to bother" considering it. "Wind pollination happens.
It's not impossible it can blow for kilometres."

The Department of Conservation (DOC) wants Crop and Food to tighten security
measures to contain GE material, although it considers the risks to
indigenous flora and fauna from the field trial are minimal and says it will
not oppose the application.

In a submission, DOC biosecurity national adviser Gail Shuttleworth said the
scale of the trial could make it a greater risk to the environment.

"The potential for hybridisation between the GE onions and exotic species is
low but ... every possible precaution should be put in place," she said.

Composting areas needed to be securely locked, like the trial site, and
monitoring was essential to keep rodents out of the GE onions. Planted GE
seeds had to be monitored to ensure none were blown away or eaten by birds
or animals, she said.
www.checkbiotech.org