40,000 hectares of GM maize fail in South Africa

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Sreedevi Lakshmi Kutty

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Mar 15, 2009, 10:45:40 AM3/15/09

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From: GMWatch <gmwatc...@gmwatch.eu>
Date: Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 8:00 PM
Subject: GMW: 40,000 hectares of GM maize fail in South Africa
To: l.sre...@gmail.com

GMWatch: According to an article in the 6 March edition of South Africa's 'Farmers Weekly' ('40,000ha of maize may yield nothing'), thousands of hectares of Monsanto's GM maize cultivars have "failed to pollinate this planting season, leaving farmers with seedless cobs".

The varieties involved seem to be:
DKC 78-45BR: a Dekalb (Monsanto owned seed company) RR (Roundup Ready)/Bt stacked variety;
DKC 78-35R: a Dekalb medium season white RR variety;
DKC 77-71R: also a Dekalb RR variety.

In the article Monsanto says it is investigating and cannot yet identify the cause of the problems. According to Area director for Monsanto, Kobus Lindeque, "There might be a number of potential causes for pollination variations and it's too early to speculate what the causes may be. We're conducting a comprehensive review. Monsanto personnel, both local and international, are currently visiting all farmers who bought the above-mentioned hybrids during the 2008/09 planting season." (p.13)

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