The typical form of an organism, strain, gene, or characteristic as it occurs in nature, as distinguished from mutant forms that may result from selective breeding.

I went to leave a comment when Leonidas wrote about an interesting dispute between Monsanto and a farmer over an herbicide resistant plant seed.

But writing the comment got me to thinking and reminded me of a topic of discussion in a biotechnology lecture years ago with Kallas.

Talk about a case of not seeing the forest for the trees...


Unlike humans, plants have multiple sets of chromosomes and can reproduce by more than one method. Most higher plants can be propagated in at least 3 ways:  pollen, seeds, and roots/rhizomes. In the case of plants, the reproductive consequences of planting genetically-modified organisms (plants with bacterial transformations, in this case) does not begin and end with the seed.

Here's the forest:  all reproductive methods of the plant that carry the mutant genome (likely plasmid) have not been considered.
 

Monsanto is more than willing to accept financial responsibility for the control of one method of propagation: the seed.

With this in mind, it follows they should be held accountable, good or bad, for all other methods of propagation of the mutant plant form.

Since the pollen carries the potential for reproductive propagation, Monsanto bears responsibility for "controlling" the pollen of the patented strain to the area of the environment where they have intentionally planted the mutant by seed. If the mutant plant develops an invasive root system and migrates outside of the intended environment, Monsanto should be responsible for the eradication. Consider that plenty of states already have laws concerning "invasive" plant species.

The farmer should sue Monsanto. His field of  "vintage" seed stock has been contaminated by the pollen of Monsanto's engineered Round-up-resistant-mutant plant. What's worse, the mutant strain of plant cannot be eradicated by application of conventional herbicides.

The mutant plant might be considered an "invasive" species when it unintentionally shows up in an adjacent environment.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) says this about invasive species:

"Invasive species can alter ecological relationships among native species and can affect ecosystem function, economic value of ecosystems, and human health. A species is regarded as invasive if it has been introduced by human action to a location, area, or region where it did not previously occur naturally (i.e., is not native), becomes capable of establishing a breeding population in the new location without further intervention by humans, and spreads widely throughout the new location."

Monsanto should have been responsible for eradication of the invasive plants from the neighboring fields.