Impact of insect‐resistant transgenic rice on above‐ground non‐target arthropods in Korea

Abstract

Transgenic rice (Bt-T event) shows resistance against rice leaf roller (Cnaphalocrocis medinalis) by expressing a toxic protein (mCry1Ac1) mediated from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Environmental risk assessment of Bt-T event, in addition to the parent variety Dongjin-byeo and cultivar Ilmi-byeo, was performed during the rice cultivation seasons of 2016 and 2017 at LMO quarantine fields in Gunwi and Jeonju, Korea. Non-target arthropods (insects and spiders) were captured using an aspirator from the three rice ecosystems of both locations, and in total 39,734 individuals of 57 families and 11 orders were collected. The numbers of individuals collected from the Bt-T, Dongjin-byeo and Ilmi-byeo rice ecosystems were 12,899, 12,730, and 14,105, respectively, which did not differ significantly among rice ecosystems. The dominance, diversity, evenness, and richness indices of the collected insects were not statistically different among the rice ecosystems, but significant variations between the two locations and survey years were detected. Principal component analysis showed that insects and spiders in the Bt-T, Dongjinbyeo, and Ilmi-byeo rice ecosystems were separated by the study locations and years irrespective of rice variety. In conclusion, results obtained in two consecutive years from two non-genetically modified rice ecosystems and a Bt-T rice ecosystem showed that the Bt-T rice had no significant negative impacts on the above-ground insect and spider communities.

Effects of Bt rice expressing Cry1Ac on ecological functional guilds and community of non‐target insects

“…Following the regulations and policy governing this study, our 2-year field study was conducted in small plots (< 0.05 ha per plot). Previous studies were also conducted in small plots (0.03 ha-0.07 ha) for assessing effects of Bt rice (Amin et al 2020;Han et al 2011;Li et al 2014;Song et al 2020). The rarefaction curves indicate that our sample size was adequate by showing that the total number of individual insects captured in our study reached an asymptote in family richness (Fig.…”

“…They reported that Bt rice effects on functional groups in the laboratory were not always consistent with that in fields, and Bt rice will influence negligible risks to non-target functional guilds in large-scale farming. Other studies also reported no consistent effects of Bt rice on non-target arthropods in Korean rice fields (Amin et al 2020;Lee et al 2014;Oh et al 2018).…”

“…To date, various studies have reported that Bt rice has no or negligible adverse effects on not only non-target insects (Dang et al 2017;Li et al 2016;Tian et al 2017) but also other arthropods (Lu et al 2020;Song et al 2020;Yang et al 2017). In Korea, only a few studies have been conducted with Bt rice for efficacy on target pests (Kim et al 2008(Kim et al , 2018Shin et al 2009) or impacts on non-target arthropods (Amin et al 2020;Lee et al 2014;Oh et al 2018).…”

Arthropod food webs associated with cotton: Does Bt cotton mediate community stress?

“…The benefits outweighing the risks of this technology led to a broad adoption of GM crops throughout the world (Brookes & Barfoot, 2020a; International Service for the Acquisition of Agri‐biotech Applications (ISAAA), 2020), although still followed by controversies (Finger et al., 2011; Gutierrez et al., 2020; Hilbeck et al., 2020). The focus on efficacy remains stronger than on the durability or non‐targeted consequences of GM crops with the sponsorship of the studies frequently tied with potential conflicts of interest (Guillemaud et al., 2016), even though the weight of evidence favours the perception of the low environmental impact of GM crops (Amin et al., 2020; Brookes & Barfoot, 2020b; Kaur et al., 2021; Koch et al., 2015; Krogh et al., 2020; Pellegrino et al., 2018).…”