A report funded by the UK government and directed by Dr Mike Wilkinson of Reading University (UK) states that cross-pollination between GM plants and their wild relatives is inevitable and could create hybrid superweeds resistant to the most powerful weedkillers.
The report, titled "Hybridization Between Brassica napus and B. rapa on a National Scale in the United Kingdom", has been published in the online magazine "Science" on 9 October 2003 (10.1126/science.1088200).
The results of the research, which involved analysing satellite images of the British countryside and patrolling 180 miles of river banks, reveal that hybridisation is both more widespread and frequent than previously anticipated.
Physical barriers such as isolation distances - buffer zones designed to stop pollen spreading from GM crops into the wild - would have only a limited impact on preventing hybridisation.
