Referring to the announcement on the Ministry of Water, Land and Natural Resources (KATS) website, the National Biosafety Board (LBK), is evaluating an application from the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) to conduct a confined field trial on genetically modified rice (GM rice) that is tolerant to glyphosate and resistant to paddy diseases caused by bacteria and fungi. This experiment will reportedly to be carried out at MARDI Arau Station, located in the Tambun Tulang area, in Perlis.
The GM rice that will be tested comes from the well-known Malaysian variety of MR219 with an additional characteristic of tolerant to glyphosate herbicide and susceptibility to bacteria Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae and fungus Pyricularia spp. This GM rice is not produced by a typical hybrid method but it is produced in a laboratory using genetic modification technology to create a novel GM rice that does not exist in nature. The application to plant GM paddy in the field has raised serious concerns over its impact on humans and the environment.
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