By Liz Nganga

A study by scientists from the Nairobi-headquartered international research
centre icipe, in collaboration with the French Institut de Recherche pour le
Développement (IRD) has established that bees have the potential to mediate
the escape of transgenes (genetically engineered material) from crops to
their wild relatives over several kilometres.
The findings, which have been published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of 9th September, bear significant implications
for the introduction of genetically modified crops in Africa.

The research, which was partly funded by USAID and the Rockefeller
Foundation, was triggered by the planned release of insect-resistant
genetically engineered cowpea in Africa, where cowpea?s wild relative, Vigna
unguiculata var. spontanea, is widely distributed. For the first time with
insect pollinators, the scientists used radio tracking to determine the
movements of the carpenter bee Xylocopa flavorufa and their implications for
long-distance pollen flow.

?Bees can visit flowers as far as six kilometres away from their nest. From
complete flight records in which bees visited wild and domesticated plant
populations, we concluded that bees can mediate gene flow, and potentially
allow transgenes to escape over several kilometres,? explains icipe
scientist Remy S. Pasquet.

He adds that for genetically engineered cowpea in Africa, these results
indicate that although pollen movement beyond a few hundred meters has a low
probability, strict isolation by distance may not be feasible. This research
therefore confirms the widely held hypothesis that deploying genetically
engineered cowpea in sub-Saharan Africa may mean that an escape of the
transgene to the wild cowpea relative is inevitable.
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