Effects of Insect Resistant GM Plants on Solitary Bees

Only a few studies have dealt with the effects of insect-resistant transgenic crops on solitary bees, and Roger Konrad and colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and University of Newcastle Upon Tyne add their research to the tally as they investigate the “Potential effects of oilseed rape expressing oryzacystatin-1 (OC-1) and of purified insecticidal proteins on larvae of the solitary bee Osmia bicornis”. The paper published by the online journal PLoS ONE reports that transgenic plants expressing the cystein protease inhibitor OC-1 and the Bt toxin Cry1Ab would pose a negligible risk for the bee larvae. Snowdrop lectin (Galanthus nivalis agglutinin) expressing plants, on the other hand, could cause detrimental effects if the bees were exposed to high levels of the protein. These results obtained for O. bicornis as model species may be relevant for a large portion of the approximately 700 solitary bee species assumed to occur in Europe since many of them are also polylectic (collect pollen from a wide variety of flowers), forage on agricultural crops and reproduce during the bloom of such crops.

For details, read the complete article at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002664