A study on the establishment of isolation distances for environmental release of biotech crops

Biotech crops can only be commercialized after they receive safety approvals, which require thorough risk assessments of their release to the environment. Environmental release experiments are indispensable for environmental risk assessments, and each country has been preparing its own regulations for the safety management of experiments on the environmental release of biotech crops in confined fields. In this study, we compared and analyzed the safety management regulations of the environmental release of biotech crops in Korea, USA, Japan, European Union, and China. Each country had safety management regulations for the environmental release of biotech crops, and these regulations were generally not much different from the Korean regulations. However, there was a difference amongst the USA, Japan, and China in regulations for isolation distances to prevent gene diffusion through pollen-flow during environmental release experiments of biotech crops. In order to establish the isolation distance regulation suitable for the Korean environment, relevant data were collected and presented. For setting the isolation distance for environment release of biotech crops, it is suggested to refer to the isolation distance information provided in the Guidance of Seed Management in Korea. The results of this study are expected to help establish the safety management of biotech crops in Korea.