Abstract
Issues related to research for assessing the environmental impact of genetically modified (GM) crops on the ecosystem are the killing of non-target insects by GM crop pollen and gene flow to related species. Dealing properly with these issues requires the development of an automatic airborne pollen count method suited to the crops in question. We therefore developed a pollen monitor that can automatically and continuously count the airborne pollen of corn, a typical GM crop, and took pollen counts outdoors throughout the flowering period of a corn community while also observing meteorological elements. Our corn pollen monitor readings had an excellent correlation of 0.95 with those of a Durham sampler, which is widely used to measure airborne pollen. Variations in the corn pollen count as measured by the corn pollen monitor and variations in meteorological elements provided these and other observations: The daily variation pattern for pollen count differed from the daily variation pattern for meteorological elements; concentration peaked in the forenoon and by noon declined to lower than half the peak; and concentration increased rapidly after sunrise, but declined slowly from the peak until nighttime. We also discovered that pollen count was related to air temperature variations: when there was a large rise in air temperature, much pollen was released and dispersed outside the community.
