Workshop on Dossier Preparation for Genetically Engineered Plants

Three workshops, organized by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, and coordinated by Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL) and the Agriculture & Food Systems Institute, were given at the National Agricultural Science Centre Complex in New Delhi, on February 22-25, 2016. The purpose of the workshops was to build capacity in the assessment of environmental risks posed by commercial releases of genetically engineered (GE) crops and to facilitate the deployment of new GE crops developed by public sector scientists in India.

Program

With the recent submission to the India government of a GE mustard variety for commercial planting approval, many public sector scientists working to develop new GE crop varieties are concerned with the preparation of their own dossiers for regulatory review. This one-day workshop provided a review of environmental risk assessment and demonstrated how an understanding of the assessment process can help scientists collect and present the data most likely to effectively inform regulatory decision making. Specifically, participants learned the difference between data collected for publication in scientific journals and data relevant in the risk assessment context. Approximately 35 public sector scientists attended the workshop.