2007 : International Polar Year

  Sixty nations participate in the International Polar Year, placed under the aegis of the International Council for Science and the World Weather Organization.

  Studying the genetical biodiversity appears among the topics defined at the international level. Modification of the biodiversity is indeed a major question, especially within an area considered today as being greatly involved in planetary balances. In this scientific framework, the following assumption is not put forward: the possible contamination of the local flora by Artificial Genetic Constructions obtained in laboratories through Genetic Engineering. Such constructions are inserted by transgenesis in plants originating from more moderate climates, and therefore are not supposed to interfere with the Arctic flora.
  However, beside corn, soya, colza and transgenic crops, there exists today a modified version of one of the most cultivated fodder plant in the world: the alfalfa. The Monsanto firm markets the alfalfas J101 and J163 which are tolerant to to a weed-killer (gliphosate). The natural population of the so-called Medicago falcata resists cold, and grows beyond the polar circle. In spite of the distance which separates the GM alfalfas from their polar wild form, the probability that pollen be transported in the atmosphere is not null, as shown in Summer 2006 measurements**.
  In addition, the concept of "horizontal transfer" between different species, mediated in particular by ground bacterias, is often neglected in the study of gene flows* of transgenic origin. If the pollen of any GM plant were found in the ground of an Arctic area, its modified genetic code could be absorbed by a bacterium known as Rhizobium , which is in symbiosis with leguminous plants such as the alfalfa. Under certain conditions, rare but not unlikely, this bacterium could then transfer the modified genetic code towards the plant.