Does Aminopyralid cause mutation

[Digeroo]

I have today been told that seed from plants contaminated by aminopyralid can be problematic when they are grown on.

Does anyone have any experience of mutating plants contaminated by Aminopyralid?

[Digeroo]

[realfood]

I have not seen anything about this. However, I save my own seed potatoes, heritage varieties etc, and I have some concerns as there was some medium  contamination of my potato bed last Summer. I think that it is likely that the seed potatoes will have residues of aminopyralid within the fibers. I hope that it will not affect the sprouting of the seed potatoes, but I will know in a month or two!!

[Baccy Man]

flighty because his is the only reference on the internet that even suggested a causation to cause genetic mutation in plants and seeds by Aminopyralid.

Here is one of several thousand possible links outlining the damage aminopyralid has done in your native country.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Grow-It/Milestone-Herbicide-Contamination-Creates-Dangerous-Toxic-Compost.aspx

[Digeroo]

I want to know if people have personal experience of problems.  I have searched the net already. 

I have saved some seed from contaminated plants so next year I will have my own experience of the subject.

[chriscross1966]

Given how aminopyralid works as a weedkiller it's hard to see how it's going to have much affect as a mutagen. OK, so the last time I was doing anything deliberate with a mutagen was in a lab 25 years ago working with salmonella but the principles are still the same, the way aminopyralid works isn't really conducive to mutagenic properties.... If you see an affect then my guess would be it's stuck to the outside of the seed and contaminating from there.

chrisc

[Vinlander]

I was shown an alleged example of aminopyralid damage by a friend and I'm pretty sure it was just fasciation (bundling of stems or merging of leaves and/or fruit) - though any kind of stress can provoke this so it could have been a contamination at a very low level.

Fasciation looks exactly like mutation in that the shape of the plant is weird but it grows quite vigorously - this is an amazingly weird one: http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/YGLNews/YGLNewsFeb12007.html

True mutations that nevertheless set viable seed seem pretty unlikely to me - and you are only going to eat it not mate with it (I hope).

Mutation is probably the only feature of this whole sorry tale that I wouldn't lose any sleep over.

The whole thing is yet another massive scandal from the synthetics makers - so I'm hopping mad too (though it's good that they were caught red handed again, but without causing loss of life - this time).

On the other hand it is very difficult to rule out other factors in individual cases.

Cheers.

PS. I'm old-school organic - not muck&magic but muck&doubt - I won't tolerate any pesticides on the part of the plant I eat, I don't want them on any part of the same plant (that goes 100x if they are synthetics), but I'm less worried about what happened to the seeds' parents. Needless to say I won't pay more than a few percent extra for organic seed - and even then I expect the seeds to be bigger than ordinary ones.

[mrestofus]

there are no reference to any mutations on the material safety data sheets on the use and affects of  Aminopyralid. So I would regard the possibility mutation as none issue.

[PurpleHeather]

I am no scientist but did notice on Wiki that there is a very close similarity between aminopyralid and clopyralid, which was used in the USA long before UK got the aminopyralid herbicides.

So having looked at the problems they had accross the pond I found a couple of sites others may wish to browse through.

http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/filelibrary/2030/3153.pdf


http://articles.latimes.com/2002/feb/19/local/me-herb19


Perhaps someone who understands chemistry could view the chemical formulae and explain exactly what the difference between the two products is.

[Vinlander]

Whatever the differences the similarities are enough to have suggested quite strongly that the same problems would occur.

If the companies involved thought the differences were enough to avoid the same problems then they were clearly wrong.

Obviously 20:20 hindsight is easy, but I still doubt that a truly balanced risk assessment is ever made by profit-driven multinationals.

In my personal painful experience of corporate culture it is inevitable that irrational optimism is regarded as a 'can-do' attitude, and any rational risk assessment - especially one that includes the real consequences of failure - is regarded as negativity.

This goes tenfold when it's likely that the most serious results of failure would affect someone else - even more so if it is mainly likely to affect groups with little economic clout - such as people who grow their own food in preference to paying an outrageous premium to commercial organic suppliers.

It's a mad world my masters...

[chriscross1966]

Clopyralid and aminopyralid act in the same way, mimicing a plant growth hormone to the point where the plant burns up trying to grow so fast.... the reason they don't degrade very fast is the stability of the benzene ring they're attached to. It's hard to deal with for most things that would otherwise degrade the chemicals available.... natural biological systems are stuffed full of such chemicals acting as hormones etc....

chrisc