Workshop on Non-Target Organisms in the Context of Environmental Risk Assessment of GE Crops

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 conducted 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

This one-day workshop provided intensive training on the assessment of possible adverse impacts to non-target organisms from crops that have been genetically engineered to be insect resistant. Emphasizing the problem formulation approach, this workshop discussed how impacts are assessed in the lab as well as in semi-field and field situations, what types of data are generated by these assays, and how that data is used in the evaluation of risks to non-target organisms. The workshop was attended by fifteen public sector entomologists.