Chaper 2: pollen flow and breeding evaluation 2.1 - pollen flow

Information on pollen flow are necessary to assess the potential impact on ecosystems of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Several pollen dispersal simulation models have been proposed in the last years. However, these models do not consider relevant features like elevation and the presence of natural and artificial barriers that can play an important role in pollen filtration/dilution. Our work focuses on pollen dispersal data of the following species (crops and trees) of which genetically modified variants can be commercially available in the near future: maize, oilseed rape, sunflower, and poplar. We used pollen traps to assess the distances covered by pollen granules of the selected species and a pollen dispersal simulation model to assess the potential contamination levels due to maize crops. At least to our knowledge, this is the first study that attempt to obtain data on pollen dispersal for sunflower, oilseed rape and forest trees such as pine and poplar using pollen samplers.