CBS News: GM grass linked to Texas cattle deaths

[TexasProgresive]

7. CBS has it wrong.

1) Tifton 85 is not genetically modified but an F-1 hybrid.

Tifton 85 is the best of many F1 hybrids between PI 290884 from South Africa and Tifton 68, a highly digestible but cold susceptible hybrid that was released in 1983. Tifton 85 is a sterile pentaploid. Except for Tifton 68, it is taller, has larger stems, broader leaves and a darker green color than other bermudagrass hybrids. Tifton 85 has large rhizomes (though many fewer than Coastal and Tifton 44), crowns, and very large, rapidly spreading stolons.
http://www.tifton.uga.edu/fat/tifton85.htm

2) The calves died from prussic acid poisoning which has not happened with Tifton 85 before but is common in some other grasses.

Prussic acid, also called hydrocyanic (HCN), normally is not present in plants. However, several common plants can accumulate large quantities of cyanogenetic glycoside. When plant cells are damaged by wilting, frosting or stunting, the glycoside degrades to form free HCN. Conditions in the rumen also favor degradation of the glycoside to free HCN. Thus plants that contain the glycoside have the potential to cause HCN toxicity when consumed by ruminants.

In Colorado, plants most likely to cause HCN poisoning are sorghums. The potential is greatest for johnsongrass and least for true sudans. Other materials with HCN potential include white clover, vetch seed and chokecherry.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/livestk/01612.html

"Thursday, June 21, 2012
Potential Toxicity Issues with Tifton 85 Bermudagrass
From Dr. Larry Redmon, Extension Forage Specialist:

Recently, 15 head of Corriente roping calves died as a result of prussic acid poisoning in Bastrop cattle in a clean field of Tifton 85 bermudagrass. While this has never been reported before, results of analyses of rumen contents and the fresh forage confirmed death was due to prussic acid poisoning. Forage specialists and researchers here and the vet diagnostic lab at first denied the possibility of this. Even the researchers and breeders at USDA-ARS – Tifton, GA, doubted the findings, but after multiple site visits, multiple forage analyses, and DNA analysis of plants from several fields from several environments across Texas, we can come to only one conclusion – the death of the cattle was indeed due to prussic acid poisoning.

A little background is in order. Tifton 85 bermudagrass was released from the USDA-ARS station at Tifton, GA in 1992 by Dr. Glenn Burton, the same gentleman who gave us Coastal bermudagrass in 1943. One of the parents of Tifton 85, Tifton 68, is a stargrass. Stargrass is in the same genus as bermudagrass (Cynodon) but is a different species (nlemfuensis versus dactylon) than bermudagrass. Stargrass has a pretty high potential for prussic acid formation, depending on variety, but even with that being said, University of Florida researchers at the Ona, FL station have grazed stargrass since 1972 without a prussic acid incident.
http://haysagriculture.blogspot.com/2012/06/potential-toxicity-issues-with-tifton.html



Typical media ignorance of what they are reporting. But Hey! you gotta hype.