IWA 32:2019
In April 2019 the first “official” method for the “Screening of GMOs in cotton and textiles” (IWA 32:2019) was published. In a project initiated by Organic Cotton Accelerator, facilitated by the Dutch standardization institute NEN and handled by the EU Reference Laboratory RIKILT, 80 participants from 23 countries developed a protocol which can serve as a screening guidance for the detection of genetically modified cotton in seed, leaf and (processed) fiber samples.
In 2020 the first international interlaboratory ringtrial organised by OCA (Organic Cotton Accelerator), GOTS (Organic Textile Standard) and WFSR (Wageningen Food Safety Research) was carried out. The analysis was founded on the „IWA32:2019-Method“, which allows the detection of genetic modifications in cotton.
Impetus Bioscience has achieved the best-possible results. We not only could detect all genetic modifications but also identify all genetically modified cotton varieties (Events) and quantify their percentage ratios.
It is very important to remark that this International Working Agreement is non-binding, i. e. methods achieving comparable or better results may be used. The objective was to have a simple screening protocol for the detection of genetic modifications which should only be regarded as the first step in cotton analysis, i. e. the important subsequent steps identification and quantification of cotton events were not part of this project.
Of course we offer this method but we can go much further.
We have developed intelligent analytical strategies to detect, identify and quantify genetically modified cotton, i.e.:
- Are there any genetic modifications in your sample?
- Which genetically modified cotton line (event) exactly is present?
- What is the exact percentage?
