How to Deal with the Upcoming Challenges in GMO Detection in Food and Feed

Abstract

Biotech crops are the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture. The commercialisation of GMO is in many countries strictly regulated laying down the need for traceability and labelling. To comply with these legislations, detection methods are needed. To date, GM events have been developed by the introduction of a transgenic insert (i.e., promoter, coding sequence, terminator) into the plant genome and real-time PCR is the detection method of choice. However, new types of genetic elements will be used to construct new GMO and new crops will be transformed. Additionally, the presence of unauthorised GMO in food and feed samples might increase in the near future. To enable enforcement laboratories to continue detecting all GM events and to obtain an idea of the possible presence of unauthorised GMO in a food and feed sample, an intensive screening will become necessary. A pragmatic, cost-effective, and time-saving approach is presented here together with an overview of the evolution of the GMO and the upcoming needs.