Stephen O Duke, “Perspectives on transgenic, herbicide‐resistant crops in the United States almost 20 years after introduction,” Pest Management Science, 2015, 71:5, DOI: 10.1002/ps.3863.

ABSTRACT:

Herbicide-resistant crops have had profound impacts on weed management. Most of the impact has been by glyphosate-resistant maize, cotton, soybean, and canola. Significant economic savings, yield increases, and more efficacious and simplified weed management resulted in widespread adoption of the technology. Initially, glyphosate-resistant crops enabled significantly reduced tillage and reduced the environmental impact of weed management. Continuous use of glyphosate with glyphosate-resistant crops over broad areas facilitated the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, which have resulted in increases in the use of tillage and other herbicides with glyphosate, reducing some of the initial environmental benefits of glyphosate-resistant crops. Transgenic crops with resistance to auxinic herbicides, as well as to herbicides that inhibit acetolactate synthase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase, and hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase, stacked with glyphosate and/or glufosinate resistance, will become available in the next few years. These technologies will provide additional weed management options for farmers, but will not have all of the positive impacts (reduced cost, simplified weed management, lowered environmental impact, and reduced tillage) that glyphosate-resistant crops had initially. In the more distant future, other herbicide-resistant crops (including non-transgenic ones), herbicides with new modes of action, and technologies that are currently in their infancy (e.g., bioherbicides, sprayable herbicidal RNAi, and/or robotic weeding) may impact the role of transgenic, herbicide-resistant crops in weed management.