Agents Concerned with Natural Crossing of Cotton in Oklahoma¹

Inflorescence Architecture: How Flower Number, Arrangement, and Phenology Affect Pollination and Fruit-Set

“…These same principles should apply to a population of flowers within an inflorescence or to a population of inflorescences on an individual plant. The same techniques used for tracing pollen flow between plants such as the use of dyes (Thies, 1953;Stephens and Finkner, 1953;Simpson and Duncan, 1956;Sindu and Singh, 1961), of radioactive isotopes (Schlising and Turpin, 1971), or of neutron activation analysis (Gaudreau and Hardin, 1974;Handel, 1976) could be applied profitably to inflorescences. In milkweeds (Asclepias) self-pollination effected by crosses between flowers within the same inflorescence or between inflorescences on the same plant has been suggested as an important factor in restricting fruit-set to levels of 1% (Wyatt, 1976(Wyatt, , 1978 and in setting an upper limit on inflorescence size (Wyatt, 1980).…”

Environmental Risk Assessment of Genetically Modified Crops: General Principles and Risks to Non-target Organisms

“…For risk assessment, one may wish to know the highest concentration of a substance that elicits no adverse effect on an organism; this is the no observable adverse effect concentration or NOAEC. If no organism were Raybould et al 2007 3 E.g., Head et al 2001;Raps et al 2001;Dutton et al 2002;Howald et al 2003;Obrist et al 2005;Obrist et al 2006a;Obrist et al 2006b;Torres et al 20064 Babendreier et al 2004 5 Westgate et al 2003;Depuis et al 1987 6 E.g., Khan & Afzal 1950;Thies 1953;Sidhu & Singh 1961;Llewelyn & Fitt 19967 Crocker et al 2002 exposed to concentrations of a substance greater than its NOAEC, then that substance would pose minimal risk to non-target organisms. Thus a third hypothesis can be tested to determine the safety of exposure to a transgenic protein, or to any other potential toxin detected in a GM crop:…”

Evolutionary Biology

“…It appears that their foraging areas on herbs are similar to those of honeybees, although bumblebees may visit twice as many flowers per trip (Ribbands, 1955;Free, 1964Free, , 1968. In fields of cotton, bumblebees work methodically from plant to plant in the immediate vicinity of the first plant visited (Thies, 1953;Simpson and Duncan, 1956). On fruit trees, bumblebees tend to work less methodically than honeybees, and fly more frequently from tree to tree (Brittain and Newton, 1933).…”

“…In cotton, Thies (1953) treated 21 flowers in the edge row of a ten-row block and found that after 2 hr every flower had been dusted. In other studies on cotton (Stephens and Finkner, 1953;Simpson, 1954), dye was found on nearly all flowers in the vicinity of the donors and up to 27 m away.…”