A proposed impact assessment method for genetically modified plants (AS-GMP Method).

An essential step in the development of products based on biotechnology is an assessment of their potential economic impacts and safety, including an evaluation of the potential impact of transgenic crops and practices related to their cultivation on the environment and human or animal health. The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment method to evaluate the impact of biotechnologies that uses quantifiable parameters and allows a comparative analysis between conventional technology and technologies using GMOs. This paper introduces amethod to performan impact analysis associatedwith the commercial release and use of genetically modified plants, the Assessment SystemGMPMethod. The assessment is performed through indicators that are arranged according to their dimension criterion likewise: environmental, economic, social, capability and institutional approach. To perform an accurate evaluation of the GMP specific indicators related to genetic modification are grouped in common fields: genetic insert features, GMplant features, gene flow, food/feed field, introduction of the GMP, unexpected occurrences and specific indicators. The novelty is the possibility to include specific parameters to the biotechnology under assessment. In this case by case analysis the factors ofmoderation and the indexes are parameterized to perform an available assessment.

Drought impact on rainfed common bean production areas in Brazil.

Common bean production in Goiás, Brazil is concentrated in the same geographic area, but spread acrossthree distinct growing seasons, namely, wet, dry and winter. In the wet and dry seasons, common beansare grown under rainfed conditions, whereas the winter sowing is fully irrigated. The conventional breed-ing program performs all varietal selection stages solely in the winter season, with rainfed environmentsbeing incorporated in the breeding scheme only through the multi environment trials (METs) wherebasically only yield is recorded. As yield is the result of many interacting processes, it is challengingto determine the events (abiotic or biotic) associated with yield reduction in the rainfed environments(wet and dry seasons). To improve our understanding of rainfed dry bean production so as to produceinformation that can assist breeders in their efforts to develop stress-tolerant, high-yielding germplasm,we characterized environments by integrating weather, soil, crop and management factors using cropsimulation models. Crop simulations based on two commonly grown cultivars (Pérola and BRS Radi-ante) and statistical analyses of simulated yield suggest that both rainfed seasons, wet and dry, can bedivided in two groups of environments: highly favorable environment and favorable environment. Forthe wet and dry seasons, the highly favorable environment represents 44% and 58% of production area,respectively. Across all rainfed environment groups, terminal and/or reproductive drought stress occursin roughly one fourth of the seasons (23.9% for Pérola and 24.7% for Radiante), with drought being mostlimiting in the favorable environment group in the dry TPE. Based on our results, we argue that eventhough drought-tailoring might not be warranted, the common bean breeding program should adapttheir selection practices to the range of stresses occurring in the rainfed TPEs to select genotypes moresuitable for these environments.