Fitness cost and competitive ability of transgenic herbicide-tolerant rice expressing a protoporphyrinogen oxidase gene

The expression of transgenic traits in genetically modified crops is sometimes associated with decreases in crop performance or fitness. These decreases in performance or fitness of transgenic plants in unfavourable conditions may provide valuable information about the ecological consequences of transgene escape. In a glasshouse trial, we tested the cost associated with resistance to herbicides by comparing the growth, yield, and competitive ability of transgenic rice with its parental non-transgenic line. This new line was developed for constitutive overexpression of protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO) to increase resistance to herbicides. We evaluated nine agronomic traits of transgenic and non-transgenic rice grown in a replacement series design over four densities. Competitive ability was also assessed between transgenic and non-transgenic plants by analyzing their relative yields based on biomass and seed weight data. Our results indicated that non-transgenic plants showed greater performance than did the transgenic plants when those genotypes were grown in mixtures. The non-transgenic rice plants exhibited superior competitive ability at certain combinations of planting densities and genotype proportions. These results suggest that PPO-herbicide resistance incurs some costs in plant performance and competitive ability.