<b>By KEVIN WALKER<br>
Michigan Correspondent</b> </p><p>

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Roundup Ready sugar beets are the first biotech product commercialized for sugar beet growers, and will be widely available for the first time this year.</p><p>
In 2007, this product was used on limited acreage in Wyoming, as well as small plots of land in Idaho and Michigan.</p><p>
“Weed control is one of the significant challenges sugar beet growers have,” said Joseph Dahmer, president of Betaseed, Inc., a sugar beet supplier based in Minnesota.</p><p>
Roundup Ready sugar beets have been genetically altered to be resistant to glyphosate, a chemical that’s used in herbicides. Without this resistance, glyphosate couldn’t be applied on sugar beet fields to kill weeds.</p><p>
“With this new technology being introduced, there’s a high degree of tolerance in the sugar beets, so you can spray glyphosate for weed control,” said Christy Sprague, an associate professor in the department of crop and soil sciences at Michigan State University.
Roundup Ready is a Monsanto brand name; Monsanto helped fund research into the genetically altered seeds.</p><p>
Sprague’s sugar beet research at MSU is taking this new product into account. Typically, spacing between rows of beets is 30 inches. Part of the reason for that spacing is cultivators can be used to help with weed control in the event that herbicides don’t do the job. With Roundup Ready sugar beets, that 30 inches may not be necessary. Spacing of 15 inches between rows, for example, might be sufficient given the effectiveness of glyphosate herbicides.</p><p>
According to Sprague, such spacing might also help create a canopy of shade, making it more difficult for weeds to grow.
Given the new type of sugar beet, Sprague, along with MSU graduate student Joseph Armstrong, is also studying the spacing between plants within the row to obtain maximum yield. Maximum yield means maximum amount of sugar in the beet, and not all beets are created equal: Beets that are extremely large, for example, can actually contain less sugar, Sprague said.</p><p>
Sprague said that the overall cost of using Roundup Ready sugar beets should end up being about the same as regular sugar beets, even though the producer will end up using less herbicide. That’s because Roundup Ready sugar beets are more expensive than regular beets. Still, the producer could end up saving money in some instances, since less hand weeding will be necessary with the new beets.</p><p>
There are some who oppose this trend toward genetically altered agricultural products like Roundup Ready sugar beets. The Organic Consumers Assoc., based in Minnesota, is one of them. An environmental scientist for the group, Craig Minowa, makes a couple of different arguments against the use of Roundup Ready sugar beets and other genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
“What we point out to them is what happened with the foreign markets with other GMO products,” Minowa said. “The price of American corn is lower than corn coming from countries that don’t use GMO corn.”</p><p>
According to Minowa, this is because countries in Europe, as well as some countries in South America, and Japan, won’t use genetically altered corn. He also says that the situation is the same with soybeans, and that moreover, GMO wheat isn’t being used in the United States because of farmers’ concerns over pricing.</p><p>
Minowa also says that although Roundup Ready sugar beets are resistant to herbicides, more herbicides end up being used, which means that more of the chemical ends up in runoff.</p><p>
Dahmer denied this last point, saying that two applications would be sufficient with glyphosate products in most cases, whereas five or six applications of conventional herbicides are common in sugar beet fields.</p><p>
Minowa hopes that more sugar beet growers adopt integrated pest management practices, which means less chemicals. According to the Sugar Industry Biotech Council, however, science and agribusiness are moving toward more GMOs, including new varieties of sugarcane.