Hyperspectral studies of transgenic oilseed rape

One risk of planting transgenic crops is the escape of transgenes to conspecifics and sexually compatible wild relatives. Detecting transgene escape is thus a crucial bio-safety issue world-wide, but most current detection methods are expensive and laborious, as well as being unfeasible for large-scale use in commercial cultivation. We undertook field spectral reflectance studies of non-transgenic oilseed rape (B. napus cv. Westar), a transgenic oilseed rape, Wild Indian mustard (B. juncea var. gracilis) and a hybrid Wild Indian mustard. Simulated reflectances for the spectral bands of several different satellite-flown hyperspectral and multi-spectral scanners were generated. The differences obtained between the simulated reflectances of the different plants leads to the possibility that these differences could be used to detect transgene escape and genomic effects among related taxa from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) hyperspectral scanner and from the Landsat ThematicMapper (TM), Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) High Resolution Visible (HRV) and IKONOS multi-spectral scanners.