magna of 455 and 30 mg/l
for glyphosate-IPA and glyphosate acid, respectively ( EC, 2002). The importance of pesticide residuals is recognised by EFSA in feeding studies for risk assessment. For glyphosate-tolerant GM soybeans, EFSA has argued that (i) the levels of glyphosate should be analysed as part of the testing, and (ii) both glyphosate-treated and untreated soybeans should be used in order to separate effects of the plant and the herbicide (van Haver et al., 2008). The toxicity and health MLN0128 relevance of glyphosate and Roundup have been debated widely. Other studies claim that glyphosate is not linked to developmental or reproductive effects in animals and humans, but that surfactants may cause some toxic effects (Williams, Watson, & DeSesso, 2012). This controversy has been reviewed in depth in (Antoniou, Robinson, & Fagan, 2012), with the conclusion that the weight of evidence indicates that glyphosate itself is a teratogen and that adjuvants Screening Library commonly used in conjunction with glyphosate amplify this effect. Comparisons between organic and conventional agriculture have not reached consistent conclusions on nutritional
quality, but a review of 223 compositional studies of nutrients and contaminants found that organic foods have significantly lower levels of pesticide residues (Smith-Spangler et al., 2012). A recent feeding study that compared organic and conventional food products concluded that organic foods may be more nutritionally balanced than conventional foods, or that they contain higher levels of nutrients, since the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster lived longer and produced more offspring when fed organic soybeans (or potatoes, raisins, bananas) compared to conventional produce ( Chhabra, Kolli,
& Bauer, 2013). Organic crops may be more variable than industrially produced plant products, but are in general richer in some nutritionally important elements, in antioxidant phytochemicals and lower in pesticide residues. Our data support these conclusions. Organic crops have also Erythromycin been reported to contain a higher content of selenium. This was however not supported by our data, where the selenium content was significantly lower in the organic soybeans compared to the GM and conventional soybeans. This study demonstrated that Roundup Ready GM-soy may have high residue levels of glyphosate and AMPA, and also that different agricultural practices may result in a markedly different nutritional composition of soybeans. In the present study organic soybean samples had a more profitable nutritional profile than industrial conventional and GM soybeans. We argue that pesticide residues should have been a part of the compositional analyses of herbicide tolerant GM plants from the beginning.