Comparative analysis of genetically modified brown rice with conventional rice varieties for the safety assessment

Abstract

Compositional analysis of genetically modified (GM) rice (OsCK1), non-GM comparator and reference rice as commercial rice was conducted for the safety assessment. The tolerance intervals (TI) of commercial rice were also set to illustrate compositional variability. GM rice, non-GM rice and reference rice were compared using principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) to assess the impact of genetic modification vs. environmental influence on the rice component. Seventeen components in forty-six analysed components were significantly different between GM rice and non-GM rice. But, the mean ranges of the seventeen components were all within those of the reference TIs. These results demonstrate that the nutrition components of GM rice (OsCK1) fell within the range of natural variability and were biologically equivalent to non-GM rice. In addition, multivariate analysis by PCA and PLS-DA revealed that environmental factors such as growing locations were important due to the variability of the rice metabolite profiles. These comparisons lead to the conclusion that disease-resistant transgenic rice (OsCK1) is compositionally equivalent to and as safe and nutritious as conventional rice varieties grown commercially.