Comical as it sounds, there is a get-away grass. Its name is Agrostis stolonifera and its nickname is creeping bentgrass. It lives in Oregon near Corvallis. Seemingly natural by all appearances, this grass has a secret, which if you didn’t know, you might not guess. This grass is genetically modified (GM). It is a mutant. It is also the first known mutant, or to be PC, genetically modified plant to escape into the wild within the United States. While this may resurrect images of freedom associated with the 1970s movie Born Free, there may be a darker side.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture may have also sensed a darker side because it has decided to run its first full environmental impact assessment of a genetically modified plant on GM creeping bentgrass. To be fair, this grass isn’t the type of plant likely to exhibit uncontrolled rapid growth, sing to us, or try to strangle us like the plant that starred in The Little Shop of Horrors. It’s MO is slightly more subtle. It has immunity to glyphosate, aka Roundup.
Ideally, spreading glyphosate all over fairways and greens will at some point allow golf courses to destroy their weeds and keep their grass. This is all very well and good for the thousands of golf course managers within the US. However, if our GM bentgrass should escape into wildernesses or waterways, it could compete with native species in those areas. Then we might want to kill it. Something stronger than glyphosate would be needed. Something more toxic.
Creeping bentgrass is unlike other genetically modified plants. It is a perennial, which means its life cycle lasts more than two years. Basically, it comes back. Most genetically modified crops such as soybeans, canola, and corn, are annuals. The life cycle of an annual is complete in one year, although sometimes it can also come back. Another difference is that creeping bentgrass has a lot of peeps, relatives with which it can breed and pass along its glyphosate-resistant gene. If the USDA approves GM bentgrass for mass distribution within the U.S., its possible the effect will be similar to the action of Kurt Vonnegut’s ice-ninein Cat’s Cradle.
In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, ice-nine was an allotrope of water (a crystallized form of water, aka ice) which was modified so that whenever it came in contact with the liquid form of water, it caused the water to freeze. Since every living thing has some amount of water in its composition, and everything on Earth is somehow connected by water, it was only a matter of time, in Vonnegut’s tale, before everything on Earth froze. The case of genetic transference is somewhat similar to Vonnegut’s tale of the uncontrolled spreading of a potentially dangerous trait. While not as immediately drastic as Vonnegut’sice-nine, herbicidal resistance could pose a problem with widespread implications. In this case, if creeping bentgrass were able to pass on its genetic herbical resistance to weedier relatives that formerly gave up the ghost when sprayed with mild herbicides, their future eradication would require something more potent.
With approximately 16,000 golf courses across the United States, popular use of GM creeping bentgrass may tend to encourage the continued practice of massive regular application of glyphosate as well as the continued toxification of the environment that this causes. This scenario encourages a future need and dependence on stronger chemical herbicides, for when bentgrass’ weedier cousins, after some inbreeding (think Deliverance), acquire immunity to milder herbicides. Since 70 percent of the United States’ commercial grass seed is produced in Oregon, there is said to be the possibility of "accidental adulteration." While the idea of a grass that escapes and/or accidentally commits adultery may seem like something straight out of Benny Hill, the reality for our world might not be so entertaining. Even though bentgrass isn’t itself considered a noxious weed, the concern is that it has the potential to breed with distant cousins who happen to be noxious weeds (the black sheep of the family so to speak) and thus transfer to them something like "super powers."
For more information check out NCAP, Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides at www.pesticide.org. Also, think of starting your own herbicide-free golf course.