Environmental Risk Assessment of Genetically Modified Organisms

David A. Andow is Professor of Insect Ecology in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota. Angelika Hilbeck is part of the Institute of Integrative Biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETHZ. Van Tuat Nguyen is the Director General of the Food Corps Research Institute,

Within Vietnam, the environmental risks of transgenic plants, managing transgenic products safely, and building modern labs to assess their safety has received increased investment and research. This book is the first scientific effort to synthesize information relevant to GM crops in Vietnam, taking Bt cotton as an example. It can be used as a technical manual to enable Vietnamese scientists to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of Bt cotton varieties prior to commercialization, and provides guidance for environmental risk assessment of any transgenic crop.

1) Challenges and Opportunities with GM Crops in Vietnam: The Case of Bt Cotton; 2) Cotton Production in Vietnam; 3) Consideration of Problem Formulation and Option Assessment (PFOA) for Environmental Risk Assessment: Bt Cotton in Vietnam; 4) Transgene Locus Structure and Expression; 5) Non-target and Biological Diversity Risk Assessment; 6) Potential Effect of Transgenic Cotton on Non-target Herbivores in Vietnam; 7) Invertebrate Predators in Bt Cotton in Vietnam: Techniques for Prioritizing Species and Developing Risk Hypotheses for Risk Assessment; 8) Potential Effects of Transgenic Cotton on Non-target Insect Parasitoids in Vietnam; 9) Potential Effects of Transgenic Cotton on Flower Visitors in Vietnam; 10) Potential Effects of Transgenic Cotton on Soil Ecosystem Processes in Vietnam; 11) Environmental Risks Associated with Gene Flow from Transgenic Cotton in Vietnam; 12) Resistance Risk Assessment and Management for Bt Cotton in Vietnam; 13) Challenges and Opportunities with Bt Cotton in Vietnam: Synthesis and Recommendations.