Risk assessment and risk management of specific receiving environments
by Dr. Amanda Gálvez Mariscal, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico. Email: galvez@servidor.unam.mx
The receiving environment plays a major role in the determination of potential risks in the deployment of GMOs. It is also an important factor in the development strategies to minimize the effect of potential risks. Biosafety research takes into consideration parameters such as crop to crop gene flow, crop to weed gene flow, crop to wild relative gene flow as well as indirect effects on wildlife biodiversity, soil and water in the process of assessing the potential risks.
There is need for research into the fate of transgenes over time in recipient wild relatives or native varieties. Also great attention should be given to specific areas where in situ germplasm collections are kept to prevent possible introgression of transgenes into these collections.
Virtual collections of information on the biology of wild and domesticated plants have been developed and provide useful baseline information for assessing the safety of GMOs in specific receiving environments.
Also of specific interest in risk assessment and risk management processes are the centers of origin and diversification. Biodiversity in centers of origin is a crucial factor to consider in risk assessment and management, especially when dealing with territories where domesticated varieties are found, and in which wild relatives and native species of economical importance still co-exist.
Three major areas of domestication and diversification are identified [references 1,2]:
- The so called Fertile Crescent in the Nile Valley of Egypt, eastward across Syria and Iran to the Persian Gulf where wheat (Triticum), barley (Hordeum), pea (Pisum), lentil (Lens) and vetch (Vicia).
- South East Asia: Thailand and China, in the Yangtze River area for rice (Oryza), soybean (Glycine), millet (Pennisetum), sugarcane (Saccharum), rape (Brassica), hemp (Cannabis).
- And in the American continent, in Mexico and Peru: corn (Zea), squash (Cucurbita), tomato (Lycopersicon), beans (Phaseolus), white potato (Solanum), sweet potato (Ipomoea), chili peppers (Capsicum), peanut (Arachis), guava (Psidium), avocado (Persea), cotton (Gossypium).
A special consideration must be given to parameters such as baseline of wild relatives of the GM crop in centers of origin, baseline of native/domesticated varieties of the crop while undertaking risk assessments at the centers of origin. The determination of the rate of gene flow in a complex system of wild and domesticated plants is challenging [reference 3] as well as the sampling procedures.
Cited references - http://arnica.csustan.edu/boty3050/Notes/origins.htm
- CONABIO. 2008. Listado de especies de flora para las cuales se ha documentado que México es centro de origen, de diversidad genética o de domesticación. Coordinación de Análisis de Riesgo y Bioseguridad. 12 p.
- Ellstrand, N.C. et al. (1999) Gene flow and introgression from domesticated plants into their wild relatives. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 30: 539-563.
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