Soil microbial community analysis in the environmental risk assessment of transgenic plants

Soil microbial community analysis is one of the most important elements in the environmental risk assessment of transgenic plants. Recent technical advances in this area now enable us to assess the impact of plant genotypes on soil microbial communities with rapid, simple and less biased molecular techniques than the previously used conventional microbiological methodologies. We review the use of these modern molecular techniques from the aspect of environmental assessments of transgenic plants.