GM plants

Although the production of GM plants could help address global issues such as providing food and reducing damage to the environment there are risks to biodiversity and unforeseen events due to the interdependence of species.Over half of the world's soybean crops are GM strains. One strain has the gene for Bt protein inserted. The Bt protein is toxic to many insect strains that attack the crop. The crop has also been modified to have resistance to a common weedkiller so the farmers can spray the fields with weed killer without damaging the crop.However, the gene for antibiotic resistance has been used as a marker gene. There is concern that this gene could spread to wild populations of plants and into bacteria.