Abstract
Further progress in plant breeding will be achieved by the combination of plant breeding based on experimental field work and novel techniques based on biotechnology. Because both approaches complement one another, their association might offer promising possibilities for agriculture, nutrition, industry, and even for medicine. These developments in plant breeding have had and will continue to have implications for the regulatory oversight and safety assessment of plants with novel traits. Though the introduction of new traits, including the stacking of several genes, may result in extensive changes of metabolic pathways, composition, toxicity, nutritional value, environmental impact, etc., a rigorous risk assessment is only required for genetically modified (GM) plants in the European Union. Whether this approach is science-based or not is discussed by the scientific community. In this chapter, implications for the regulatory oversight and risk assessment are addressed in more detail for GM plants.
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Devos, Y., Lheureux, K., Schiemann, J. (2010). Regulatory Oversight and Safety Assessment of Plants with Novel Traits. In: Kempken, F., Jung, C. (eds) Genetic Modification of Plants. Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry, vol 64. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02391-0_26
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