My name is Godelieve Gheysen and I am Professor of Molecular Genetics at Ghent University, Belgium. I am a biologist with a PhD in Plant Biotechnology. I have a question to Neha Saigal (Message 27). Can you explain to me what exactly you mean with your statement on diversity?: "There is a high risk of contamination from Bt Brinjal to the other varieties thus putting at risk the diversity,..". How can a gene that gives insect resistance to a plant by "contamination" decrease the diversity of the crop? Do you mean farmers will prefer the GM cultivars because they are useful and ignore all other cultivars, unless they get "contaminated" with the resistance gene? Natural selection will most likely not favor the insect resistant plants in the wild because insect pressure is much lower than in a agricultural field. Farmer selection can of course have a big impact on crop diversity. Godelieve Gheysen Ghent University Belgium e-mail: Godelieve.Gheysen (at) UGent.be [To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information on this FAO Biotechnology Forum, see http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/] ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the Biotech-Room2-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Biotech-Room2-L&A=1