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For Immediate Release
June 9, 2006
News Release
Local Scientists Win Top EPA Award
Contact: Ann Brown, 919-541-7818, or brown.ann@epa.gov
(Washington, D.C.-June 8, 2006) A team of local scientists at EPA's laboratory in Corvallis, Ore. has received a prestigious EPA award for first documenting the potential for the genes of genetically-modified (GM) plants to be widely dispersed in the form of wind-blown pollen. The team is headed by EPA ecologist Lidia S. Watrud, Ph.D.
Watrud and her EPA colleagues have received one of three first place (Level I) Scientific and Technological Achievement Awards (STAA), a top honor recognizing outstanding research. The EPA team discovered that pollen from a GM turf grass, known as creeping bentgrass, can travel at least 13 miles. Previously, research documented gene flow at a maximum distance of only a mile, and more typically a few thousand feet.
"The bodies of work that we are recognizing with these awards are fine examples of how cutting-edge science not only advances our understanding of the environment, but also provides solutions for meeting EPA's mission to protect human health and safeguard the natural environment," said George Gray, assistant administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development which sponsors the awards.
The STAA awards recognize outstanding scientific and technological achievements that have been peer-reviewed and published by EPA employees. The award-winning research is part of the lab's Gene Flow Project, a study to develop methods for estimating and tracking movement of genes from crops to wild plants, and then determine what effects bioengineered genes might have on natural plant communities.
The study has been widely reported internationally in over 150 newspapers, journals, magazines, and other media, and is recognized in the scientific community as a “seminal” study of gene flow. It also provides critical scientific information for developing risk assessments for genetically-modified organisms, an issue important to the EPA.
The 2005 awards were presented May 18 at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. Other EPA employees who shared in the honor are Constance A. Burdick, Jay R. Reichman, E. Henry Lee, and Anne Fairbrother. The team works at EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Western Ecology Division in Corvallis. Watrud served as lead author for the paper, “Evidence for landscape-level, pollen-mediated gene flow from genetically modified creeping bentgrass with CP4 EPSPS as a marker,” which appeared in the October 4, 2004, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
EPA's laboratories, research centers, and grantees are building the scientific foundation needed to support the Agency's mission to safeguard human health and the environment.
EPA 2005 STAA Awards recipients: http://es.epa.gov/ncer/staa
EPA's Office of Research and Development: www.eap.gov/ord