Plant & Animal Genomes XIII Conference

January 15-19, 2005
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Development Of Trim Retrotransposon Markers For Gene Flow Analyses In Brassica

Ruslan Kalendar² , Maria Erkkila¹ , Katri Pahkala³ , Pirjo Peltonen-Sainio³ , Alan H. Schulman^1,2

¹  Plant Breeding Biotechnology, Plant Production Research, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Myllytie 10, FIN-31600 Jokioinen, Finland

²  MTT/BI Plant Genomics Laboratory, Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 56, Viikinkaari 4, FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland

³  Crop Science, Plant Production Research, MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Myllytie 10, FIN-31600 Jokioinen, Finland

Under the regulatory structures of the European Union, agricultural products marketed or labeled as conventional or organic must be certifiably not mixed with GMO materials. Although contamination can occur at any stage of the production chain from the field to the packaging or labeling of the final product, contamination at the field level is the most problematic because it is the first step in the production chain (“seed to silo”). Field contamination can arise either from pollen flow or from the spread and survival of plants from other seasons, so-called “volunteer” plants. To be able to be prepared for the potential risk of GMO contamination, methods need to be developed both to prevent genetic pollution in the field, as well as to monitor and verify purity and detect degree of contamination. Gene flow from GMOs can be detected by quantitative PCR of the transgene, but in the absence of that information molecular markers must be employed. Our key objectives are: to develop cost-effective, sensitive, and robust tools for the monitoring of gene flow and contamination in turnip rape (Brassica rapa), oilseed rape (Brassica napus), and potato; to use these tools to gather data on the parameters for pollen- and volunteer-mediated flow under farm-scale conditions in Finland; to use these data to model gene flow and make risk estimates; on the basis of the data and models, to prepare recommendation for co-existence under Finnish climatic and agronomic conditions. Here, we present data showing that conserved retrotransposons provide a useful method for detecting gene flow, providing sensitivity below 0.05% B. napus DNA in B. rapa samples.