ABSTRACT

MON 87460 is a maize (Zea mays L.) product that expresses cold shock protein B to impart drought tolerance. Here we describe our evaluation of MON 87460 for agronomic and phenotypic parameters, ecological interactions, reactions to abiotic stressors, ability to persist in uncultivated areas, root growth, and across‐season water use compared with those of a conventional control hybrid with a similar genetic background. These data were used for the environmental risk assessment of MON 87460, a process required for commercialization of any new genetically modified crop. Any statistically significant differences were considered in the context of the genetic variation known to occur in maize and were assessed for their potential impact on plant pest (weed) potential and their potential environmental impact. The environmental risk assessment included several product‐specific studies to assess the trait for unintended effects such as tolerance to stresses other than drought. The results of these studies revealed no effects of the genetic modification that would result in increased pest potential or adverse environmental impact of MON 87460 compared with a conventional control and no evidence for pleiotropic effects. The results of the plant characterization studies and the subsequent environmental risk assessment support the conclusion that the environmental risks associated with cultivation or import of MON 87460 are no different from the risks associated with conventional maize.

In country, non-target arthropod (NTA) field evaluations are required to comply with the regulatory process for cultivation of genetically modified (GM) maize in Mexico. Two sets of field trials, Experimental Phase and Pilot Phase, were conducted to identify any potential harm of insect-protected and glyphosate-tolerant maize (MON-89Ø34-3 × MON-88Ø17-3 and MON-89Ø34-3 × MON-ØØ6Ø3-6) and glyphosatetolerant maize (MON-ØØ6Ø3-6) to local NTAs compared to conventional maize. NTA abundance data were collected at 32 sites, providing high geographic and environmental diversity within maize production areas from four ecological regions (ecoregions) in northern Mexico. The most abundant herbivorous taxa collected included field crickets, corn flea beetles, rootworm beetles, cornsilk flies, aphids, leafhoppers, plant bugs and thrips while the most abundant beneficial taxa captured were soil mites, spiders, predatory ground beetles, rove beetles, springtails (Collembola), predatory earwigs, ladybird beetles, syrphid flies, tachinid flies, minute pirate bugs, parasitic wasps and lacewings.Across the taxa analysed, no statistically significant differences in abundance were detected between GM maize and the conventional maize control for 69 of the 74 comparisons (93.2%) indicating that the single or stacked insect-protected and herbicide-tolerant GM traits generally exert no marked adverse effects on the arthropod populations compared with conventional maize. The distribution of taxa observed in this study provides evidence that irrespective of variations in overall biodiversity of a given ecoregion, important herbivore, predatory and parasitic arthropod taxa within the commercial maize agroecosystem are highly similar indicating that relevant data generated in one ecoregion can be transportable for the risk assessment of the same or similar GM crop in another ecoregion.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.