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Conference held at The Botanical Garden of Berne, January 29-31, 1998

The development of biotechnological techniques will allow the industry to produce transgenic plants with altered traits that may affect the chance of invasion and alter organism-interactions in natural communities. In order to assess the hazards from these new transgenes, information on a wide range of subjects is required. It is essential that the most relevant research data are obtained quickly by the use of the most effective research methods available.

A conference sponsored by Swiss Governmental agencies and Industry, was held in Bern in order to enhance communication between science, biotech companies and regulators. More than a hundred participants from all over the world took part in this conference; among them were some of the most notable risk assessment researchers, as well as important representatives from biotech companies and some major regulatory office members. Views and knowledge were exchanged in an excellent collaborative learning atmosphere. The process was accompanied by lively discussions (some 10 hours were recorded), with ample time to clarify misunderstandings. The most important results produced during the conference are summarised below.

Monitoring is a continuous control of something. In population biology it can be the study of populations during a time period, e.g. the study of succession in an ecosystem with the focus on a certain species or genotype, or dispersal of a species in a certain area. Depending on the species studied the questions of why, when and how the monitoring shall be performed have to be considered before initiating the monitoring program. Marvier et al. [1] have discussed if monitoring is the way to reduce the risks of transgenic plants.

The emphasis of this chapter is on the practical procedures and theoretical framework which are currently applied or have been suggested for ecological risk assessment of transgenic plants. In this context, reference will be made to the general concepts and principles for risk assessment which have been established for other fields of environmental problems. This means that the experience from handling risk from toxic compounds in nature (ecotoxicology), simulation of processes (modelling) and management of populations and genetic resources (conservation ecology) will be included. Also, the experience from introduced species and monitoring invasion and gene-flow will be discussed.