Re: A break for the bees-Geniticly altered flowers for nectar
My guess is that it's bad news. Now that they know how to turn nectaries on and off and since they have already been breeding to turn them off to avoid pests that might be attracted to the nectar and conserve the plants' energy for growing food instead of making nectar. Now they know how to turn it off altogether. I predict that will happen more often than the other way around. There were already plenty of plants that were making plenty of nectar that were hard enough to find. If they make hubam clover that makes three times as much nectar they will probably be coming on my place and testing to make sure I pay them every year for the use of their genes...
From my understanding on the article, this isn't about GM plants. Rather, they have found markers that help them identify high nectar yielding individuals, which tremendously aids artificial selection in favor of that trait. Of course, the opposite is true, but how would seed companies produce seeds of nectar-free cultivars for distribution if they can't get any pollination themselves?
As for royalties, sure, if they market a "Triple Nectar Super Bee Clover" cultivar, they can ask for royalties on all "Triple Nectar Super Bee Clover" sales. But after that, you sow them in your apiary, and they'll cross with wild clovers, and thus spread the nectar superproduction genes, on which they won't get royalties. That's how the royalties work in horticulture, it's pretty much only Monsanto with the GM crops that has patents on specific genes. It's really mostly a trademark on the cultivar name.
The main question is whether this will find any commercial outlet at all. The researchers state that increased nectar production would increase pollinator attractiveness and thus generate greater yields. That's quite an assumption. One I'm rather skeptical about. If higher nectar yields would result in greater seed yields, then natural selection would have favored these high-nectar specimen. But it hasn't, and you did raise a valid point: too much nectar production draws too much energy, which thereby threatens the plant's viability. Too much nectar per individual plant also means that pollinators need to visit less plants to satisfy their needs. Is that something that fruit and vegetable growers want? Doubtful. The only obvious market is for beekeepers. Yet, most beekeepers do not work the land to install bee-friendly cultures, they simply move the hives to where the forage is at. Save for the few that have the land, the know-how, and the will to establish bee pastures, who is going to buy these high-nectar varieties? With such a limited market potential, who is going to invest to produce such seeds on a commercial level? There lies the main problem, if you ask me.
