Roundup-resistant weeds embarrass Monsanto. (Environmental Intelligence).The world's most popular weed-killing chemical is losing its effectiveness. Glyphosate glyphosate herbicide and desiccant for grains. Heavy doses to birds cause soft shells on their eggs. , popularly known by the brand-name Roundup, has been used so extensively on mass-produced crops of soybeans, cotton, and corn that it has triggered an evolutionary backlash. Roundup is produced by Monsanto, specifically to serve farmers who grow Monsanto's genetically engineered genetically engineered adjective Recombinant, see there crops. The Roundup Ready crops are designed to be impervious to the Roundup herbicide herbicide (hr`bəsīd'), chemical compound that kills plants or inhibits their normal growth. A herbicide in a particular formulation and application can be described as selective or nonselective. , providing farmers with the purported advantage of being able to spray the chemical directly on the crop. That convenience, however, has evidently encouraged such widespread use that the few weeds that could survive the herbicide have begun to thrive in the fields where other weeds have died off. The incipient incipient (insip´ēent), adj beginning, initial, commencing. incipient beginning to exist; coming into existence. failure may provide an opening for more sustainable, organic, techniques, since simply replacing Roundup with other GMO/herbicide combinations could lead to new rounds of adaptive resistance, |
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