11.06.2002 |

Seed purity in Greece

According to a press release issued by the Greek Ministry of Agriculture on June 5th, the PCR testing of all seed lots of cotton, maize, sugarbeet and tomato is over and the results are1. maize: 475 samples , 474 negative, 1 positive, the entire seed lot was destroyed2. tomato: 115 samples, all negative3. sugar beats: 19 samples, all negative4. cotton: 640 samples, 638 negative, 2 positive (the seed lots were re-exported).Interesting to note, that nearly half of the cotton seeds (approx 45%) were of US origin. In other terms there is plenty of clean seed.Nikos Charalambides, Greenpeace Greece