The decision by Defra to issue consent in September 2011 for Rothamsted Research to
carry out a trial of GM wheat resistant to
aphids led to further clashes between pro and anti GM campaigners in early 2012.
These observations,
carried out at an extraordinary level of detail, made it possible to establish the interactions between one hundred or so species situated on four trophic levels: plants (23 species),
aphids that feed on these plants (25 species), wasps that lay their eggs in the bodies of the
aphids (22 species), and other wasps that lay their eggs in the larvae of the preceding wasps inside
aphids (26 species).