Impact Assessments of Transgenic cry1Ab Rice on the Population Dynamics of Five Non-Target Thrips Species and Their General Predatory Flower Bug in Bt and Non-Bt Rice Fields Using Color Sticky Card Traps

A 2-yr field study was conducted to assess the effects of transgenic japonica rice (KMD1 and KMD2) with a synthetic cry1Ab gene from Bacillus thuingiensis Berliner on population dynamics and seasonal average densities of five thrips species including Stenchaetothrips biformis (Bagnall), Frankliniella intonsa (Trybom), F. tenuicornis (Uzel), Haplothrips aculeatus (Fabricius), Haplothrips tritici (Kurd) and their general predatory flower bug, Orius similis Zheng as compared to the parental control rice line using the white, blue and yellow sticky card traps. Population dynamics and seasonal average densities of these five thrips species and their general predatory flower bug were not significantly affected by rice type. Additionally, the white sticky card trap was suggested to be the most suitable for monitoring the population of these five thrips species and their general predator. These results show that our tested Bt rice lines do not interrupt the population of non-target thrips species and their general predatory flower bug in the field, and also cannot result in more occurrence of these thrips species in the rice ecosystem.