Supervision and Test Center (Beijing) for Environmental Safety of Genetically Modified Plant-related Microorganisms, Ministry of Agriculture

The Center is affiliated to the Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (BRI-CAAS). It first got three certificates of CMA from National Metrology Accreditation, CATL and Inspection Acceptance from the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) in June, 2008. The center passed again the certification evaluation of National Metrology Accreditation, Inspection Acceptance and Agricultural Products Quality and Safety Check from MOA in September, 2011 and in October, 2014. Now it is authorized to supervise, inspect and test the characteristic features and environmental safety of genetically modified agricultural organisms, and the identification of plant varieties.

The GM organisms include soybean, rice, canola, cotton and maize, tobacco, potato, tomato, fish, plant-related microorganism and their derived products. In terms of food safety, the testing parameters include regulatory elements, marker genes, target genes, construct-specific sequences, event-specific sequences, exogenous proteins, etc. In terms of environmental safety, the testing parameters include the molecular characteristics, target trait, genetic stability, gene flow, surviving competition ability, the effect of biodiversity and the effects of target plants on GM soybean, rice, canola, cotton, maize and plant-related microorganisms. Additionally, variety identification is performed through DNA fingerprinting in maize and rice.