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RESEARCH PLAN: EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL HERBICIDES AND GENE FLOW ON NON-TARGET PLANTS
Citation:
Olszyk, D M., L S. Watrud, E H. Lee, T G. Pfleeger, AND J S. Fletcher. RESEARCH PLAN: EFFECTS OF CHEMICAL HERBICIDES AND GENE FLOW ON NON-TARGET PLANTS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA 600/R-03/024.
Description:
This project supports EPA's mission to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment ? air, water, and land ? upon which life depends. Specifically, we address EPA's responsibility to prevent pollution and reduce the impacts from pollution to communities and ecosystems (Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Goal 4, "Safe Communities"). To achieve this goal, EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) requires scientifically credible information and methods for use in assessing health and ecological risks from products used in commerce, including chemical pesticides and genetically engineered plants. OPPT regulates chemical and biological pesticides primarily under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) administered through the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP). Other acts and programs, especially the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) are administered by OPPTS's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) to provide for protection of the environment from chemicals and biological pesticides. In the past, protection of ecological resources has received minimal attention under these regulations compared to concerns regarding impacts on human health. Recently, however, awareness of adverse effects from drift of new low-dose high-toxicity herbicides to non-target crops and native vegetation has heightened awareness of the need to improve tests for effects of chemical herbicides to plants. Similarly, public concern regarding the release of genetically engineered plants and the adoption of the "Final Rules and Proposed Rules for Plant-Incorporated Protectants" (40CFR Parts 152 and 174) have increased the need for tools to evaluate the risks from engineered plants and gene flow from engineered crops to other plant species. Thus, OPP and OPPT need tools to assess ecological risks from transgenic crops, improved methods for spatially explicit ecological risk assessments, new methods to provide for efficient and effective gathering and interpretation of herbicide hazard identification and dose-response data, and investigations of the potential effects of high priority hazards.
To address the needs of OPP and OPPT, EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) is conducting research and fostering the sound use of science and technology to provide scientific information to facilitate health and ecological risk assessments. ORD has developed a multi-year plan (MYP) to establish long-term research goals and to coordinate research among different research laboratories and centers concerning health and ecological effects from pesticides and genetically engineered plants. Under the ORD MYP, the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Western Ecology Division (WED) in Corvallis, will identify and understand the specific terrestrial effects of pesticides (focusing on herbicides) and genetically engineered plants.
Within WED, the Pesticides Project has been established to develop tools to improve EPA ecological risk assessments for use chemical herbicides and genetically engineered plants. With these tools, ecological risk assessments will be better equipped to predict potential effects of chemical herbicides and engineered plants upon important agricultural and ecological endpoints, i.e., for agricultural ecosystems, crop quality and yield; and for non-agricultural or native plant ecosystems, ecosystem structure and function, especially as they relate to wildlife habitat and the viability of threatened and/or endangered species. The Pesticides Project has developed this Research Plan "Effects of Chemical Herbicides and Gene Flow on Non-Target Plants" which identifies three research goals relating to terrestrial ecosystems to address ORD's long-term goals and OPP and OPPT's ecological research needs. These goals are to: 1) determine ecological effects of gene flow from transgenic crops, 2) develop regional analysis and interpretation tools, and 3) determine effects of chemical herbicides on non-target crops and native plants. The research to address these goals is described in three strategic components of the Research Plan: Regional Analysis and Interpretation, Effects of Chemical Herbicides on Terrestrial Plants, and Ecological Effects of Gene Flow from Transgenic Crops.
The Regional Analysis and Interpretation Research will develop a system to collect, analyze and interpret data for use in the Problem Formulation and Risk Characterization phases of assessing risks from chemical herbicides and GM crops. Data and model components will be obtained through collaborative efforts with federal, state and local agencies, as well as industry as feasible. The analysis will use Geographic Information System (GIS) to carry out the assessments on a regional basis. The GIS research will provide tools for spatially locating plant species potentially at risk from use of a new product, as well as phenology (e.g., timing of occurrence of developmental events during plant life-cycle, such as flowering) of non-target plants relative to timing of pesticide application. The system will provide a basis for selecting appropriate test species and response endpoints for risk assessments. The GIS platform will then be used to characterize risk, by combining exposure models and relevant plant response data in a probabilistic framework. As part of this regional analysis effort, plant responses relevant to ecosystems (e.g., species composition, productivity) will be recorded as possible input parameters for wildlife habitat models that are being constructed by the WED Terrestrial Habitat Project.
The Effects of Chemical Herbicides on Terrestrial Plants Research will develop methodologies to test effects of chemical herbicides on individual terrestrial plant species and communities. It will use outputs from the regional analysis research to identify crop and native plant species, herbicides, and herbicide treatment (e.g., timing, concentrations) conditions important for specific areas of the United States. Experimental protocols for terrestrial plant tests will be refined for application to nontraditional species (e.g., perennials or woody species) and response endpoints (e.g., seed yield or other reproductive or developmental parameters). Research will also be conducted to develop molecular or cellular tools to extrapolate responses to non-tested species or to verify field exposures. The plant test research will focus on low-dose, high-potency herbicides, but also use some high-volume compounds. The protocols developed for chemical herbicide testing will also be adapted for use with other industrial chemicals.
The Ecological Effects of Gene Flow from Transgenic Crops Research will develop molecular methods to detect the presence of transgenic or other marker genes, evaluation of gene flow from engineered to non-engineered plants, measurement of potential ecological effects of gene flow on plant community structure and function, and definition of inputs for a prototype model for gene flow. Experiments will be conducted at various scales, ranging from contained laboratory, to growth chamber or greenhouse, to field. Current advances in genomics and proteomics will be evaluated for their ability to identify potential adverse effects of gene flow in agronomic and non-agronomic ecosystems.
Overall, this research project will provide tools to assist EPA in its regulatory role in registration of chemical herbicides and genetically engineered crops that produce chemical pesticides; thereby promoting sustained productivity of agricultural crops while maintaining the ability of ecosystems to support wildlife and to carry out other essential services. The tools also will aid post-registration monitoring to determine the success of registration restrictions in protecting non-target crops or native plants. Furthermore, the will be useful for determining ecological effects of other chemical pesticides and industrial chemicals.