1.Pests damaging biotech corn, getting an early start
2.Monsanto Corn Injured by Early Rootworm Feeding in Illinois
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1.Pests damaging biotech corn, getting an early start
Georgina Gustin
St Louis Post-Dispatch, June 15 2012 
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/pests-damaging-biotech-corn-getting-an-early-start/article_300d8916-b66b-11e1-b824-0019bb30f31a.html

Illinois corn growers are seeing problems already.
Corn that has been genetically engineered by Monsanto Co. to kill pests is being damaged by those pests instead and it's weeks earlier than they typically show up.

"We're still early in the growing season, and the adults are about a month ahead of schedule," explained Mike Gray, a professor of entomology with the University of Illinois. "I was surprised to see them and there were a lot."

Last year, farmers in several states found that the western corn rootworm a major crop pest that has the potential to seriously reduce yields was surviving after ingesting an insecticidal toxin produced by the corn plants. The corn, launched in 2003, is engineered to produce a protein, known as Cry3Bb1, derived from a bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. The rootworms ingest the roots of the corn, known as “Bt corn,” and the protein is fatal.

But farmers in six states last year reported damage from rootworm to Bt corn a sign that the product, which was grown on 37 million acres in 2011, could be losing its efficacy.

The reports last year came after Iowa State University researcher, Aaron Gassmann, published a study saying that the rootworms were becoming resistant to the product, creating so-called “superbugs” in Iowa fields.

Gray said that resistance has not been proven in Illinois fields, but the rootworms found in Illinois have been bred in a lab at Iowa State to determine if resistance is developing, or being passed from one generation to the next.

"That's the suspicion. We're careful not to use the resistance word here in Illinois," he said. "But it matches what Gassmann has seen so far."

Gray said he got a call from a seed dealer who told him he had spotted the damage in a Cass County field. Last year, farmers reported damage in LaSalle, Whiteside and Henry counties.

Monsanto said it was working with farmers to help them monitor any potential damage, and was dispatching specialists to Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota and Kansas.

"We're working really closely with our dealers as well as growers to understand the circumstances and the history to provide some solutions," said Danielle Stuart, a Monsanto spokesperson. "We're recommending that farmers keep a close eye on their fields."

The company, earlier this week, posted information on its website, alerting growers to the problem.

"If you look at what's happening right now, the mild winter, the dry weather, it's has really created the potential for insect pressure this season," Stuart said.

With high demand and high prices for corn, many farmers are planting the crop year after year and on more acres, ramping up the possibility that resistance could develop. Federal regulators require a 20 percent "refuge" of non-Bt corn near Bt acres, but many growers have ignored that and oversight has been lax.

Typically, corn farmers have had to rotate corn crops to minimize pest pressures. But with Bt corn, many simply planted "corn on corn," year after year.

Monsanto says it will be holding "corn on corn clinics" this summer in hard-hit areas to explain how to better manage fields.

In the meantime, researchers say they are bracing for a potentially difficult year.

"It's very early in the season and the damage was quite severe," Gray said. “I think a lot of people, including producers, the agricultural business community, Monsanto, and my colleagues at other land grant universities, we're really going to be watching this. To be honest, we don't know what's ahead of us."
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2.Monsanto Corn Injured by Early Rootworm Feeding in Illinois
Jack Kaskey
Bloomberg News, June 15 2012  
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-15/monsanto-corn-injured-by-early-rootworm-feeding-in-illinois

Monsanto Co. corn has been overwhelmed in parts of Illinois by rootworms that hatched a month early, renewing concern that the bugs are becoming immune to the insecticide engineered into the crop.

An “amazing” number of rootworms have emerged as adult beetles, the earliest start in at least 30 years, Michael Gray, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana, said today in an online journal. The insects “severely pruned” the roots of corn observed June 7 at a farm in Cass County, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

The western corn rootworm is one of the most destructive pests and historically cost U.S. farmers about $1 billion a year in damages and chemical pesticides before crops with built-in insecticide were developed. Corn fields in four states were overrun with the bugs last year, incidents that the Environmental Protection Agency suspects is a sign of increasing resistance to the insecticide.

The damaged fields in Illinois have been planted with corn continuously for at least 10 years, including six consecutive years with corn engineered to produce the Cry3Bb1 protein from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a natural insecticide, Gray said.

“Under these conditions, the selection pressure for resistance development is markedly increased,” he said.

The damaged plants probably will fall over, a phenomenon known as lodging, as the insects continue to dine on the roots and the plants gain height, Gray said. The rootworm begins life as a root-chewing grub before developing into an adult beetle.

Monsanto evaluated fields on the Cass County farm and will collect bugs for study next week, said Danielle Stuart, a spokeswoman for the St. Louis-based company.

“This is a unique situation and there were surrounding fields that had little to no damage, so we also want to better understand why we see some fields more heavily infested than others,” she said an e-mail.

Growing Resistance
The Cry3Bb1 protein is engineered into Monsanto crops and SmartStax corn, which contains a second Bt protein from Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) (DOW) and DuPont Co. (DD) (DD) Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, introduced its rootworm-killing corn technology in 2003. Less than 0.2 percent of the 37 million acres planted with the trait last year experienced unexpected rootworm damage, the company has said.

An Iowa State University study published last July was the first to confirm that some rootworms have evolved resistance to Monsanto’s Bt corn. A study to determine whether rootworms that damaged Illinois fields last year are resistant to the modified crop should be completed in August, Gray said.

Early Rootworms

Farmers should begin scouting for high rootworm populations earlier than usual in case insecticides need to be applied, Monsanto said.

“The combination of a mild winter, early spring planting, and the hot, dry conditions has created the potential for heavy insect pressure in corn fields this season,” Stuart said.

Monsanto’s worst resistance problem is with crops engineered to tolerate its Roundup herbicide. Weeds that Roundup no longer kills have invaded as many as 20 million acres (8.1 million hectares) of corn and soybeans, according to a Dow study.

As many as 28 million acres of cotton, soybean and corn may host Roundup-resistant weeds by 2015, according to Syngenta AG. (SYNN)