Impact on uncultivated flora

Genetically modified crops may also have impacts on uncultivated and ‘natural’ environments. These environments may be affected by characteristics of crop and wild species induced by novel genetic constructs and their products. Risk assessments must therefore concentrate on whether the genetically modified characteristics of a GM crop and of similarly modified hybridising wild relatives are likely to change the behaviour of the plants or dependent flora and fauna in their environment, to the extent that ecological balances are altered.