Hyperspectral studies of transgenic oilseed rape

Abstract

One risk of planting transgenic crops is the escape of transgenes to conspecifics and sexually compatible wild relatives. Detecting transgene escape is thus a crucial biosafety issue world-wide, but most current detection methods are expensive and laborious, as well as being unfeasible for large-scale use in commercial cultivation. We undertook field spectral reflectance studies of non-transgenic oilseed rape (B. napus cv. Westar), a transgenic oilseed rape, Wild Indian mustard (B. juncea var. gracilis) and a hybrid Wild Indian mustard. Simulated reflectances for the spectral bands of several different satellite-flown hyperspectral and multi-spectral scanners were generated. The differences obtained between the simulated reflectances of the different plants leads to the possibility that these differences could be used to detect transgene escape and genomic effects among related taxa from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) hyperspectral scanner and from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) High Resolution Visible (HRV) and IKONOS multi-spectral scanners.

Acknowledgements

Funding support partially from The State Key International Cooperation Project (20073819), The State Key Fundamental Science Funds of China (2010CB950702 and 2010CB428503), The State High Technology Funds of China (2009AA122001 and 2009AA122005), the Key Project of the Scientific and Technological Program of New Transgenic Varieties Development (2008ZX08012-005), The State Key Basic Research Funds of China (2007FY110300-04 and 08) the NSF-China Project (40671132, 30670316 and 30590383) and The Key Project of Zhejing Province (2008C13G2100010). This work was also made posible by a USDA Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grant. The authors thank Bin Wang, Zhongyong Xiao and Zhixi Tang for their assistance in the field survey and with hyperspectral measurements. Drs Changhui Peng, Jie Chang and Xiaohua Wei are thanked for their assistance with an earlier version of this manuscript.