Analysis of Agricultural Characteristics for the Virus Resistant GM Pepper Plants Grown in Three Different Regions in Korea

This study was to investigate agricultural characteristics between 2 lines of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) resistant transgenic hot pepper plants and their control pepper plants grown in three different regions of Korea in order to establish the evaluating protocol and standard assessment for the genetically modified (GM) hot pepper. In 2007 and 2008, agricultural characteristics of 2 GM pepper plants carrying CMV coat protein (CP) gene and their control plants were investigated. The collected data was analyzed to compare each characteristic between GM and non-GM pepper plants in the same field and in three different regions. From the statistic analysis, there were not many significant differences between GM and non-GM peppers. However, there were few differences found in some of the quality investigation items. These exceptions included investigation items of vegetative growth period and fruit setting period of red peppers. On the other hand, there were apparent differences shown among all three regions in 2007 and 2008. Upon comparing the characteristics of GM and non-GM peppers collected from three different regions, the value of each characteristic shown in GM and non-GM peppers from the northern region was higher than the southern region. This was due to the low temperature in the northern region compared to the southern region. In yield of GM and non-GM peppers in each region, total fruit weight of GM pepper was higher than non-GM pepper. Moreover, the total fruit weight of green and red peppers from 2377 line (H-15 and P-2377) were higher than 915 line. Also the total fruit weight of GM and non-GM peppers from three different regions in 2007 and 2008 varied. In conclusion, there were not significant differences between GM and non-GM peppers in terms of agricultural characteristics.