Compositional equivalence assessment of insect-resistant genetically modified rice using multiple statistical analyses

Seon-Woo Oh, Eun-Ha Kim, So-Young Lee, Da-Young Baek, Sang-Gu Lee, Hyeon-Jung Kang, Young-Soo Chung, Soon-Ki Park & Tae-Hun Ryu

GM Crops & Food, Volume 12, 2021 - Issue 1

Published Online: 01 Mar 2021

ABSTRACT

The safety of transgenic Bt rice containing bacteria-derived mCry1Ac gene from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) was assessed by conducting field trials at two locations for two consecutive years in South Korea, using the near-isogenic line comparator rice cultivar (‘Ilmi’, non-Bt rice) and four commercial cultivars as references. Compositional analyses included measurement of proximates, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, and antinutrients. Significant differences between Bt rice and non-Bt rice were detected; however, all differences were within the reference range. The statistical analyses, including analysis of % variability, analysis of similarities (ANOISM), similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis, and permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) were performed to study factors contributing to compositional variability. The multivariate analyses revealed that environmental factors more influenced rice components’ variability than by genetic factors. This approach was shown to be a powerful method to provide meaningful evaluations between Bt rice and its comparators. In this study, Bt rice was proved to be compositionally equivalent to conventional rice varieties through multiple statistical methods.

See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2021.1893624

Figure 1:

The value of percentage variability for each individual nutritional component in rice grains