'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 DETECTION OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS USING REAL TIME QUANTITATIVE PCR (TAQMANTM)TITLE C. CHARLES, P. ISAAC Agrogene SA, Moissy 77555, France

The concern in Europe about the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the food industry has led some companies involved in the production of transgenic plants to establish separate non GMO production chains. The detection of GMOs is necessary in order to guarantee the GMO-free status of these products and comply with European regulations. The TaqMan^TMtechnology permits the quantitative detection of GMOs in a reliable and precise manner. The analysis requires previous knowledge of the sequences of genes integrated into the plant genome and to define the appropriate primers and probes for sequence detection. The GMOs quantification is based on the multiplex PCR amplification of these GMO specific sequences and a species-specific control sequence.