Fees or refuges: which is better for the sustainable management of insect resistance to transgenic Bt corn?

ABSTRACT: The evolution of resistance in insect pests will imperil the efficiency of transgenic insect-resistant crops. The currently advised strategy to delay resistance evolution is to plant non-toxic crops (refuges) in close proximity to plants engineered to express the toxic protein of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). We seek answers to the question of how to induce growers to plant non-toxic crops. A first strategy, applied in the United States, is to require Bt growers to plant non-Bt refuges and control their compliance with requirements. We suggest that an alternative strategy is to make Bt seed more expensive by instituting a user fee, and we compare both strategies by integrating economic processes into a spatially explicit, population genetics model. Our results indicate that al

SUBMITTER: Vacher C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1618916 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature