> Dale I don't understand are u saying that there are no
> longer pure Non GMO corn from your company.
This thread is beginning to sound like the chlorpyrifos thread! In real
life "zero" almost never literally means zero. It means "undetectable."
Because measurement techniques keep advancing, "zero" is a (rapidly) moving
target. Just as modern chromatography has made possible the detection of
pesticide residues at absurdly low levels, PCR has made the detection of
single molecules of DNA possible, at least, in principle.
> how does the GMO corn get mix up with the non GMO corn?
In July and August the cornbelt is blanketed with a gigantic cloud of corn
pollen. Most of the pollen falls in the same field, but small amounts go
everywhere. Some of the pollen blows into seed production fields, producing
off-type seed (spurious hybrids). Hybrid corn seed has never been pure.
The old timers did drive-by growouts in the winter to test the purity of
their seed. The lot had to be pretty bizarre looking to fail that. Then
came careful examination of about 120 plants in winter grow-outs and/or
protein electrophoresis (usually only on 100 seeds). This approximates
current practice, giving a limit of detection of roughly 1 seed in a 100.
But PCR can be way, way, way more sensitive. None of this is of any
practical consequence. It is an esthetic matter.
> are you saying to Klaus that your company can no longer sale
> Non GMOs.
No one can, if you use a test that is extraordinarily sensitive. We are
doing the best we can, and working hard on this problem. I don't think it
ever occurred to us (not to me anyway) that anyone would care if they got a
few GMO seeds in their bag of conventional hybrid.
> Does this mean there are no Pioneer Hi-Bred's
> that are not contaminated.
Most companies have carryover seed produced a few years ago they can sell to
customers who need very low levels of GMO contamination. As for new
production, there are ways to achieve stringent levels of purity (maybe as
low as 0.01%), but it will be expensive. Most customers won't need that,
and won't be willing to pay for that.
Dale
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail