美国国家公共电台 NPR Rogue Weedkiller Vapors Are Threatening Soybean Science

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

There is a weed killer¹ that American farmers spray on millions of acres. It's hard to control, and its fumes² have drifted across the landscape, damaging other crops and wild vegetation. Now the chemical is becoming a threat to scientific research on one of the world's most important crops - soybeans. NPR's Dan Charles has the story.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE³: Professor Pengyin Chen at the University of Missouri has devoted⁴ his life to soybeans - breeding new varieties of it.

So you've been breeding soybeans for how long?

PENGYIN CHEN: Twenty-eight years. If you're counting my student - graduate school, it's more than 30 years now.

CHARLES: He takes different soybean plants, cross-pollinates them, reshuffling the genes⁵ the way you'd reshuffle and deal cards, looking for the genetic⁶ version of a lucky hand.

CHEN: We do the magic combination.

CHARLES: He does it here on 16,000 or so small plots of soybeans at the Fisher Delta⁷ Research Center in the southeastern corner of Missouri.

CHEN: This is the first field we planted this year.

CHARLES: But something is wrong with the soybeans out here.

CHEN: You see how small they are? - the canopy⁸.

CHARLES: The leaves ought to be wide and flat. Instead, they're curled into cups. Also, instead of growing straight up, the plants are putting out fragile, little side branches.

CHEN: This plant is not supposed to have a branch there. No.

CHARLES: It's kind of being deformed⁹.

CHEN: Yes, somewhat. Yeah.

CHARLES: It's pretty clear what's going on here, actually. Chen's been seeing this kind of damage for three years now, ever since farmers all around this research station and across the country started planting a different kind of soybeans. These soybeans are genetically¹⁰ modified to tolerate a herbicide called dicamba. So farmers can spray dicamba in their fields, and it kills the weeds. But the dicamba-tolerant soybeans are fine. Dicamba's arrival is provoking two different reactions.

CHEN: Love it or hate it.

CHARLES: Farmers who use dicamba love it because it works. The neighbors, though - they've got a problem. All over the country, dicamba's been evaporating and floating away, damaging vegetation that doesn't have those special dicamba-tolerance¹¹ genes, especially soybeans. They're incredibly sensitive to dicamba. Now, most farmers have now switched over to dicamba-tolerant soybeans. Their fields are safe. Chen can't switch, though, because he's supposed to produce knowledge not more soybeans. He's a so-called public soybean breeder - a non-commercial alternative to the big seed companies. The soybeans he's studying out here are not dicamba-tolerant, so they are suffering.

CHEN: It was very discouraging and very hurtful. I mean, as a scientist, you see all the research being affected¹². And we were not able to do a scientific analysis of the data.

CHARLES: Public breeders like Chen are like custodians¹³ of genetic diversity for the world's most important crops. They study obscure kinds of soybeans that private seed companies ignore, searching for hidden genetic treasures - genes that can make soybeans more resilient and productive. His biggest worry is that dicamba's making it impossible to carry out public research on soybeans here and maybe other places too.

CHEN: If you kill all the public research programs, who is going to study the disease resistance or stress tolerance? So those efforts are going to be gone.

CHARLES: Soybean researchers in other places are having problems. They're reporting damage at the University of Nebraska, Kansas State and at the University of Arkansas. I visited a research farm in the town of Keiser in northeast Arkansas. And station manager Mike Duren showed me soybeans with classic dicamba symptoms.

MIKE DUREN: The very tip of the leaf itself has a distinct curled-up point to it.

CHARLES: Do you think - walking around this farm, you said 700 acres. Of the acres that are in soybeans, how many of them do you think would show these kinds of symptoms?

DUREN: A hundred percent.

CHARLES: Hundred percent - every single one.

DUREN: Yes.

CHARLES: The company Bayer, which created dicamba-tolerant soybeans, says dicamba does not cause problems when people use it properly, following all the rules. In an email to NPR, the company wrote that it's aware of the damage at Chen's research plots. It suggested that perhaps it came from nearby farmers spraying an older, unauthorized version of the chemical. Researchers at universities in other places like Tennessee, Minnesota and North Carolina say their soybean experiments are doing fine. But some of them also say they're worried because farmers are planting more dicamba-tolerant soybeans every year, spraying more of this chemical and increasing the chances it'll do more damage.

Dan Charles, NPR News.  

1 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

2 fumes   

n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体

参考例句：

• The health of our children is being endangered by exhaust fumes. 我们孩子们的健康正受到排放出的废气的损害。
• Exhaust fumes are bad for your health. 废气对健康有害。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 devoted   

adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的

参考例句：

• He devoted his life to the educational cause of the motherland.他为祖国的教育事业贡献了一生。
• We devoted a lengthy and full discussion to this topic.我们对这个题目进行了长时间的充分讨论。

5 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

6 genetic   

adj.遗传的，遗传学的

参考例句：

• It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
• Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。

7 delta   

n.（流的）角洲

参考例句：

• He has been to the delta of the Nile.他曾去过尼罗河三角洲。
• The Nile divides at its mouth and forms a delta.尼罗河在河口分岔，形成了一个三角洲。

8 canopy   

n.天篷，遮篷

参考例句：

• The trees formed a leafy canopy above their heads.树木在他们头顶上空形成了一个枝叶茂盛的遮篷。
• They lay down under a canopy of stars.他们躺在繁星点点的天幕下。

9 deformed   

adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的

参考例句：

• He was born with a deformed right leg.他出生时右腿畸形。
• His body was deformed by leprosy.他的身体因为麻风病变形了。

10 genetically   

adv.遗传上

参考例句：

• All the bees in the colony are genetically related. 同一群体的蜜蜂都有亲缘关系。
• Genetically modified foods have already arrived on American dinner tables. 经基因改造加工过的食物已端上了美国人的餐桌。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 基因与食物

11 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

12 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

13 custodians   

n.看守人，保管人( custodian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• If we aren't good custodians for our planet, what right do we have to be here? 如果我们作为自己星球的管理者不称职我们还有什么理由留在这里？ 来自电影对白
• Custodians primarily responsible for the inspection of vehicles, access, custody. 保管员主要负责车辆的验收、出入、保管。 来自互联网