Everything you need to know about GMO Testing

What are GMOs?

A GMO, or genetically modified organism, is a plant, animal, microorganism whose genetic heritage has been modified using genetic engineering or transgenic technology. Genetic engineering allows scientists to move desired genes from one organism into another. This creates combinations of plant, animal, microorganism genes that do not occur in nature or through conventional crossbreeding methods. GMOs are also called “Living modified organisms” meaning living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology. 

What aspects differentiate GMOs from traditional crops?

The insertion of one or more exogenous genes allows the vegetal to acquire new characteristics that can be advantageous ad various levels.

In this context, some benefits of genetic engineering can be increased crop yields and faster growing plants; reduced need for pesticides; enhanced nutritional values; resistance to pests and infectious disease; tolerance to atmospheric stress, such as extreme temperatures, salinity, drought.

On the other side, there are some potential risks which are all those that can arise from changes in the natural interaction between plant and biotic/abiotic environment, that could even harm human or animal health. Moreover, the consequences of the active spread of GMO in nature, are sometimes unexplored.

Which are the most widely grown GM crops?

The most widely grown GMO crops are soybeans, maize, cotton, oilseed rape and sugar beet. There are GMOs belonging to other classes of vegetal species such as rice, potato, flax, papaya, etc.

Is there a European regulation on GMO?

The building blocks of the GMO legislation are: The directive 2001/18/EC on the deliberate release of GMOs into the environment; The Regulation (EC) 1829/2003 on genetically modified food and feed; The Regulation EC 1830/2023 concerning the traceability and labelling of genetically modified organisms and the traceability of food and feed products produced from genetically modified organisms.

The European Union legislation aims to ensure a high level of protection for human, animal and environmental health. In this context, the release of GMOs into the environment and their use in food and feed is regulated. The resulting framework is based on three main phases: pre-market authorisation obtained with a previous risk assessment, traceability and labelling. Within this legal framework, the EU has authorised the placing on the market of more than 100 GMOs.

Referring to the GMO content, in the perspective of unintended, adventitious or technically unavoidable presence in food and feed of GMO, the presence has to be maximum 0.9% per ingredient before the need of labelling the product as “GMO”.

What detection strategies can be used for GMO analysis?

Several strategies as direct DNA-based methods or indirect protein-based methods have been developed to detect GMO in food and feed samples. Due to its numerous advantages in terms of flexibility, simplicity, rapidity and high analytical sensitivity, the Real time PCR is the DNA-based method of choice in GMO analysis. The Real time PCR system allows detecting, identifying and quantifying GMO in both unprocessed and processed food/feed matrices.

What is Neotron's analytical proposal?

Neotron is able to determine all GMO events authorised in EU and others unauthorised or waiting for authorisation, belonging to soya, maize, oilseed rape, cotton, beet, flax, potato and rice plant species.

The analytical method provides an updated preliminary analysis of screening sequences accompanied, if necessary, by the specific determination of certain GM events which don’t carry screening sequences. The analyses are combined depending on the type of matrix and/or specific customer requirements. In case of positive screening, a qualitative analysis of GMO events for the plant species of interest can be carried out: this analysis may cover, according to the needs of each client, authorised events in EU or all events that can be detected. Finally, the quantification of the positive events completes the GMO determination analysis.

Does Neotron have new services to highlight?

Neotron keeps constantly updated on the introduction of new GMO authorizations and on changes in the status of existing authorizations, updating its analytical packages accordingly.

What are NGTs? What is the main difference between GMO and NGTs?

With GMO technologies, scientist can incorporate genes from other species, like other crops or bacteria, while NGTs (new genomic techniques) are obtained from selective breeding and the addition of any foreign genetic material into the organism is not involved. In this context, molecular biology is used to make site directed changes.

The Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee of European Parliament (ENVI) recently adopted its position on the Commission’s proposal on NGT’s.

First of all, two different product categories have been established: NGT1, which will be considered equivalent to traditional varieties, and NGT2 which will have to maintain most of the requirements in use for GMO plants, including mandatory labelling for processed products and safety assessment before marketing authorization.  Furthermore, all NGT plants should remain prohibited in organic production as their compatibility requires further consideration; finally, no patents will be permitted for all NGT plants to avoid increased costs and new dependencies for farmers and breeders. 

The scientific world looks towards NGTs with great interest and raises the existence of challenges regarding the availability of reference materials, the development of methods for their identification and the building of quality databases to catalogue plant genomes. In the future, once we will have official methods, having in advance the knowledge of the genetic modification, it would be possible to investigate NGTs with Real time PCR, digital PCR and sequencing techniques.