Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

Guidance on the Assessment of the Impact on Wider Biodiversity
from Proposed Cultivation of GM Crops


Annex B

Possible crop types for worked examples of risk assessments

GM high-protein oat: inclusion of such a crop in an arable system could affect crop rotations by replacing non-cereal protein break crops and the ways they affect farmland biodiversity.

GMHT crop that follows another (but different) GMHT crop that could affect control of volunteers as a result of 'gene-stacking' of herbicide tolerance characteristics.

GM frost/salt/drought tolerant crop (e.g. potatoes) that could allow cropping in areas of conservation value where arable cropping was not previously possible (e.g. salt marsh).

GM low-temperature tolerant crop (e.g. maize) that could allow the crop to be grown further north in the UK, in arable areas where previously the crop could not survive. This would allow an increase in the use of associated herbicides.

GM winter variety of a previously spring-sown crop (e.g. sugar beet) that could affect herbicide and cultivation management.

GM shatter-resistant oilseed rape that could affect management by removal of need for use of desiccants or swathing.

GM changed oil-content oilseed crop (e.g. rape) that has little effect on the existing management practices.

GM insect resistant biomass-fuel tree species (e.g. poplar or willow) that could replace arable or grassland, affecting use of farmland at the landscape level and in the longer term (e.g. 40 years or more).

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Published 31 July 2001
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