A Study on Application of Hotelling T2 to Statistical Evaluation of Genetically Modified Products

A genetic modified organism (GMO) is defined as “an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination” (EU Directive 2001/18). Typically, genetically modified foods are plant products such as corn, soybean and cotton. Genetic modification aims to render the resulting plant variety more favorable in nutritional quality or agronomic characteristics. The substantial equivalence is an important concept in the safety assessment of food or/and feed derived from genetically modified crops. In this study, we will first introduce the concept of substantial equivalence for evaluating GM products. An existing traditional crops can served as a basis for comparison for new varieties that has been modified. Substantial equivalence is claimed if no meaningful difference is found between GM product and its non-GM counterpart. Considering the correlation between chemical components within the same product, we applied Hotelling T２ method to evaluate substantial equivalence of GM products. We conducted simulation study in different correlations and different number of variables to compare the performance between the Hotelling T２and T test. numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed procedure.