The News and Views article by Gray and Raybould¹ paints a rosy picture of the future of agricultural crops engineered with resistance to the herbicide glyphosate. It is true that the presence of the glyphosate resistance transgene (the EPSPS gene) in the chloroplast genome of crop plants would eliminate pollen transfer of this gene to weedy relatives. But there have already been large-scale releases of transgenic, glyphosate-resistant ('Roundup Ready') crops, including glyphosate-resistant Brassica napus (Canola, varieties Quest and LG3295), which is disturbing as there are many Brassica weeds that could potentially hybridize with the engineered B. napus (for example, see ref. 2).

1. Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
   e-mail: Email: srobert@u.washington.edu
2. Department of Plant Science, University of Adelaide, Glen Osmond, S.A. 5064, Australia