Wheat Incident Highly Suspicious

 Wheat Incident Highly Suspicious

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Monsanto Vice President and Director of Technology Robb Fraley told reporters Friday that the most important finding brought to light through APHIS and Washington State University investigations of a random appearance of volunteer GE wheat plants found in just one field in Oregon last month is that the CP-4 event has been found nowhere else.

FRALEY: Washington State University reported this month that it has screened public and private varieties representing 90 percent of Washington soft white wheat crop and found no evidence of glyphosate resistant wheat. And they also noted that it has screened nearly 3/4 of the less heavily planted spring wheat varieties with similar results. WSU said the process has involved sixty varieties, 1900 advanced breeding lines, and more than twenty thousand individual plots from the WSU programs to date.

Fraley also addressed the question of whether the event is in commerce.

FRALEY: Bottom line from all of these test results - from the USDA, from our business, and from Washington State University continues to reinforce that the commercial seed supply for the bi-state region does not contain the CP-4 event.

Fraley went on to say that in Monsanto’s opinion the incident is highly suspicious and that the random appearance of the volunteer plants in one field from a seed mixture that was found in no other fields further points to the possibility of sabotage. Japan and Korea have temporarily suspended new purchases of soft white winter wheat, but Fraley says they are not aware of any cancellations of wheat orders or any deliveries being rejected.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.