You may be moving corn for a Non-GMO Identity Program (IP), or you may be a farmer desiring a Non-GMO premium on thousands of acres of corn. The last thing anyone wants is GMO to be found while the product is headed for premium non-GMO markets. With all the GMO seed products on the market today, it is hard to keep track of which strip tests for what. Your neighbors could be buying and planting various GMO traits this spring. Wouldn’t it would be great to know what, exactly, is in your corn? Our non-GMO corn combs have as many as nine strips.  People often ask us, “what do all those strips do?” Because it is a full-time job to keep up on what GMO traits are present in any given seed, our corn comb is designed to detect the GMO protein in corn that is currently on the market. That way, you will be able to detect any and all GMO present in the corn coming through your facility, or in the seed that you are about to plant.

Our strips fall into three broad categories of trait detection:

1. Herbicide tolerance,
2. Lepidoptera managment, and
3. Coleopteran management.

The first category refers to weed suppression. You’ve most likely heard of Roundup Ready. It was the first widely available trait in corn and it was a game changer. The second trait in this category that is detected by our corn comb is Liberty Link. Like Roundup Ready, it puts another powerful tool in the farmer’s tool box when dealing with competitive vegetation.

The next group is Lepidoptera managers. This is the genus of insect that Corn Borers fall into. ‘Cry’ proteins (GMO) kill insects and it is one of the most well-studied, well-characterized proteins in history. There are thousands of variations that have different effects on bugs. The ones that kill corn borers are Cry1, Cry1AB, Cry1F, and Vip3A…Vip proteins are fascinating in their own right, but we’ll write about that in a future article.

Last on our list are the Coleoptera managers, that mitigate potentially devastating pests such as root worms. In certain applications, these proteins are expressed specifically in root tissue keeping the protein where it is needed. No energy is wasted by expressing it in leaf tissue, for example. The proteins fatal to root worms are Cry3B, Cry34, and modified Cry3A.

Here is a Quick glance at the 9 strips that help you detect the presence of GMO.

Strip	Name	Commercial Product	Function
C1	Cry1A	YieldGard Bt11	Corn Borer/lepidopteran
RR	Roundup Ready	Agrisure, Optimum, Enlist, and others	Herbicide Resistance
C3	Cry3B	YieldGard Rootworm	Rootworm/coleopteran
1F	Cry1F	Herculex, PowerCore, and Acremax	Corn Borer/lepidopteran
LP	Liberty Link	Agrisure, SmartStax, Herculex, Optimum, and others	Herbicide Resistance
34	Cry34	SmartStax, Herculex RW	Rootworm/coleopteran
3A	Modified Cry3A	Agrisure Rootworm MIR604	Rootworm/coleopteran
C2	Cry2A	Genuity/PowerCore	Corn Borer/lepidopteran
VP	Vip3A	Viptera, MIR162	Corn Borer/lepidopteran