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Originally Posted by Bagor
Let's put it even better and be more specific: "Are weeds likely to evolve to carry the same resistance to glyphosate as crops designed or bred to resist glyphosate?
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Well I can agree that this is an important question, and although I don't know about the "same resistance", I would be very surprised if weeds didn't evolve for some resistance at least. Thing is, if a plant can have it bred or programmed into it, it can evolve, because those are just different ways of doing the same thing: editing the DNA.
This has very little to do with GMO, however, but more in the way we approach farming. GMO crops are designed to be easy for farmers to use with current or derivative techniques, so of course they will have the same problems as conventional crops. People who approach the issue as if "GMO" is some bugbear that threatens our food supply are not attacking the right opponent, and it's especially annoying because GMO likely will be the way we get OUT of non-sustainable farming, due to it being a technology that we have barely begun to master, and which has almost infinite potential.
That being said, super-weeds are not that serious an issue - evolution is never going to come up with ways to stop us killing things faster than we can think of ways to kill them. I'm not saying it's not an issue at all, but we are far more likely to figure out a way to drive some weeds to extinction than we are to be overcome by them - mankind's ability to exterminate species is, sadly, one of our special talents.