There is a great need for efficient and reliable sampling plans for analytically tracing GMOs. This project comes up with the best ways of sampling food and feed material to be able to check for GM content along all food and feed supply chains.
One part of this project is to analyse currently used sampling plans. These include plans for taking samples from seed, crops in the field, harvested grain, food and feed ingredients, and finished products. Different methods are compared and statistics are used to find out the reliability of each sampling method.
This project studies supply chains to find the most strategic points for GMO testing. Some points along the supply chain are better suited for GMO testing than others. Testing crops in the field, for example, can pose major problems, as conventional crops situated closely to a GM field will likely have much more GM presence than plants in the same field that are farther away from the GM planting. Collecting a sample representative of the entire field would require considerable planning and effort. To save time and money, for example, it may be recommendable to test for GMOs after harvest.
The team has reached only preliminary, unpublished results at this stage of the project.
| NAME / ORGANISATION | CONTACT INFORMATION |
| StefanieTrapmann Joint Research Centre (JRC), Italy |
Email: info@coextra.eu |