GE onions attract record number of submissions

4.00pm

More than 1900 people and organisations have made submissions on plans by crown science company Crop and Food Research to field test genetically engineered onions.

The previous record number of submissions on a GE application was 863, made over an application to develop a GE cow.

The Environmental Risk Management Authority said 427 of the submitters had asked to speak at a public hearing, which will start on November 3 in Christchurch.

The application is to field test onions engineered for tolerance to the herbicide glyphosate -- the active ingredient of Roundup weedkiller -- and to evaluate their environmental impact; herbicide tolerance; agronomic performance; development as cultivars and equivalency to non-GE onions.

Crop and Food Research plant geneticist Colin Eady has said his onion could allow growers to use chemicals that were less toxic than those used now.

A gene inserted into the onion makes it resistant to glyphosate, which herbicide manufacturers have said breaks down relatively quickly, and is non-toxic to mammals.

Conventional onions are a slow-growing crop, poor at fighting off weeds. Farmers use a battery of up to 15 different herbicides to control weeds, and many of the herbicides are more toxic and longer-lasting than glyphosate.

Onions are the country's fourth-largest horticultural crop.

Dr Eady said if his GE onion was a success, the country could save about $2.25 million a year because growers would only need to spray about five litres of glyphosate per hectare, compared to the 16 litres of chemicals now sprayed per hectare every season.

In such a transition, the amount of Roundup sprayed would double from 2.25 litres/ha to 4.5 litres/ha, and use of most other herbicides except Stomp, with the active ingredient of pendimethlan, would be stopped. The amount of pendimethlan used would fall from 1.8 litres/ha to 0.5 litres/ha.

Greenpeace has challenged the claim the onions would reduce herbicide use, when "Roundup-ready" crops in the United States and Canada had led to increased herbicide use and the use of older, more toxic herbicides to combat 'superweeds' -- from species related to the crops -- which had aquired glyphosate resistance.

Onions have no weedy relatives in New Zealand.

- NZPA