Genetically modified crops have long drawn fire from environmentalists, who worry that there could be contamination of organic food or creation of FrankenWeeds. Properly used, there is no chance of that, the only thing that can happen is trace material.

Still, they have worries and science may have an answer: modern plant genes damaging the claims of the $105 billion organic food industry might be mitigated by...plant genes.

Dr. Sherif Sherif, a post-doctoral researcher studying Dutch elm disease in University of Guelph's Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation, is lead author of a new paper in BMC Biology which they believe is the first-ever study to identify a gene involved in altering fruit trees that normally cross-pollinate - needing one plant to fertilize another - into self-pollinators.

Researchers might one day insert this gene into GM crops to prevent even their pollen from reaching other plants.

Plant agriculture professor Jay Subramanian, a co-author on the paper, said, "There are a lot of transgenic crops worldwide. There is concern about pollen from them being able to fertilize something in the wild population, thus creating 'super weeds.'"

The researchers found a gene making a protein that naturally allows a small handful of plants to self-pollinate and make fruit before the flower opens. Peaches, for example, have closed flowers, unlike their showy-flowered plum and cherry cousins that need pollen from another tree to fertilize and set fruit.

Besides aiding crop farmers and food producers, their discovery might be a boon to perfume-makers, said Subramanian. Used in fragrant perennials such as jasmine, the gene might keep flowers closed and allow growers to collect more of the aromatic compounds prized by perfume-makers.

"That's when volatile compounds are peaking," said Subramanian. "When the flower opens, you lose almost 80 per cent of those volatiles."

Most plants develop open flowers to attract pollinators, but it takes energy to make flowers as well as nectar and pollen. Subramanian said plants with closed flowers - called cleistogamous, or Greek for "closed marriage" -- might have developed in environments lacking pollinators or under adverse conditions.

"This is the first time we know of that someone has shown that, using molecular tools, you can induce cleistogamy in plants," he said.