A new glyphosate resistance mechanism in plants that has similarities to cancer drug resistance in humans has been discovered and announced in an article by Neil Lyon on the Grain Central website.
The article begins: Researchers from the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative (AHRI) at the University of Western Australia, the Hunan Academy of Agricultural Science in China and Kiev in Ukraine have established that ABC transporter genes – which are present in nearly all living organisms – endow plants with resistance to the herbicide, glyphosate.
The ABC transporters behave in a similar way to how ABC transporters in humans can give resistance to anti-cancer drugs.
The discovery was made by scientists testing glyphosate-resistant awnless barnyard grass grown in the Kununurra-Ord River region of Western Australia.
They found the resistance was due to ABC transporters taking hold of the glyphosate molecules and pumping them out of the plants’ cells before they had time to have a toxic effect.
