NEWS OF TH E WEEK
SEVEN CHARGED IN CORN SEED HEIST SHUTTERSTOCK
TRADE SECRETS: DuPont, Monsanto
Defendants are charged with pilfering corn seed from fields in Iowa and Illinois.
are targets of Chinese competitor
A
DES MOINES, IOWA, federal grand jury has
indicted seven Chinese nationals for stealing hybrid corn seed technology from DuPont and Monsanto test fields in Iowa and Illinois. The indictment accuses the group of conspiring to steal and send back to China parent seed lines containing gene-modified and plant-bred traits such as resistance to disease, pests, and drought. All seven worked on behalf of Dabeinong Technology Group, a Beijingbased agricultural conglomerate founded in 1993. Among those arrested and indicted is Mo Yun, the wife of Dabeinong founder Shao Genhuo, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa. According to Forbes magazine, Shao has a net worth of $1.3 billion. The indictment accuses Mo of being the brains behind the operation. The FBI began tracking the group in May 2011 follow-
ing an alert from DuPont. A company security guard, posted at a cornfield in Iowa, had reported observing Mo Hailong, Mo Yun’s brother and Dabeinong’s director of international business, on his knees digging up recently planted corn seed. The FBI subsequently tracked Mo Hailong and others over the next year and a half as the group collected corn seed and mature ears of parent corn from research fields operated by DuPont, Monsanto, and the seed company AgReliant Genetics. To get the seed back to China, the government says, one defendant tucked the stolen kernels into Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn boxes packed into his luggage. A second defendant traveling back to China tried to conceal the seed corn in Pop Weaver boxes. Each of the defendants faces a prison term of up to 10 years and a fine of $250,000, according to a government spokesman. For DuPont, the case is the latest in a string of intellectual property theft experiences. In 2012, federal prosecutors charged five people with stealing DuPont’s titanium dioxide technology at the behest of the Chinese government. In 2009, DuPont accused South Korea’s Kolon Industries with stealing trade secrets for making Kevlar aramid fiber. It has been fighting Kolon in court since then.—MARC REISCH
NEONICOTINOIDS MAY HARM BIRDS
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JOUK E ALTEN BURG/RADBOUD U
The common starling is one of the 15 species of birds thought to be affected by elevated imidacloprid insecticide concentrations in streams and lakes in the Netherlands.
populations (Nature 2014, DOI: 10.1038/nature13531). Bayer CropScience spokesman Utz Klages tells C&EN that the company’s scientists believe the study is inconclusive about the indirect effects of neonicotinoids, as the researchers “make no proper attempt ECOLOGY: Environmental impact of to account for other possible sources of the reported the insecticides could be broader declines, such as climate change.” than previously thought Hallmann’s team examined Dutch bird-monitoring data and surface-water quality measurements and found that 15 insect-eating bird species HN N ECLINES IN INSECT-EATING bird have been declining by 3.5% on average populations on farmlands in the NethN Cl annually. The declines began in the 1990s N NO2 erlands that have coincided with the inand coincide with the introduction of imicreased use of neonicotinoid insecticides suggest dacloprid, the most common neonicotinoid. Imidacloprid that the chemicals may pose a greater risk to the The bird declines are most noticeable in areas environment than previously believed. where surface-water concentrations of the insecticide Neonicotinoids are insect neurotoxins designed to are above 20 ppt. wipe out pests that damage crops. The insectiThe new study confirms what has been observed for cides, manufactured by Bayer CropScience and years in Europe, says Jean-Marc Bonmatin of France’s Syngenta Crop Protection, are usually applied National Center for Scientific Research, who has studied as seed dressings and are absorbed by seedlings the environmental impact of neonicotinoids. Bonmatin and spread throughout the plants as they grow, notes that these results are echoed in a soon-to-be-pubprotecting them from herbivorous insects. lished global biodiversity assessment report by the indeBut neonicotinoids have been linked to the pendent scientific Task Force on Systemic Pesticides. decline of beneficial nontarget pollinating “The most important fact is that the researchers demspecies such as honeybees. The chemicals are onstrate a clear correlation of a cascading effect with thought to be nontoxic to mammals and birds. imidacloprid contamination—it is beyond the direct However, Caspar A. Hallmann and colleagues effects that are already known on pollinators and soil of Radboud University, in the Netherlands, invertebrates,” Bonmatin says. “This is a serious threat argue that neonicotinoids might be indirectly for the biodiversity of birds and probably of numerous responsible for the observed decline in bird insect-dependent species.”—STEVE RITTER CEN.ACS.ORG
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JULY 14, 2014
