Agricultural safety assessment for the progeny of drought-tolerant Agb0103 GM rice

The significance of environment change and genetic safety has been recently recognized by the commercialization of GM (genetically modified) crops. In this study, we evaluated the agricultural safety of drought-tolerant Agb0103 GM rice and to identify and assess environmental risks. The drought-tolerant Agb0103 GM rice including the donor plant, Ilmi and four cultivars were analysed for agronomic characters, weediness potential, survival ability in the natural environment and pollen-mediated gene flow in GM crop fields through the following experiment. First, we planted above plants Agb0103, Ilmi and four cultivars in irrigated paddy field and rainfed paddy field. And we measure agronomic characteristics. There was no statistically significant difference in agronomic characters between the drought-tolerant Agb0103 rice and the donor plant, Ilmi. There was also no statistically significant relationship between the weediness potential and survival ability in the natural environment. Especially, Viviparous germination ratio of harvest was 2.6% in irrigated paddy field lower than other varieties. These results indicate that drought-tolerant Abg0103 GM rice may be used to detect genetic safety and evaluation standards in GM rice progeny.