The evident underlying costs of transgenes estimated from our field experiments in GM rice and other GM crops raise a common question: could a cryptic yield loss of insect-resistant GM crops happen under insufficient target insect stresses? In other words,
insect-resistant GM crops may not provide a direct yield increase under low insect occurrence (Andersen et al., 2007; Gomez-Barbero et al., 2008).
If this finding holds true, biotechnology developers are encouraged to further improve transgenic biotechnology for minimizing or reducing the potential underlying cost of a transgene(s), and biotechnology users are also encouraged to apply strategies to circumvent such a possible yield loss of insect-resistant GM crops under the changing agricultural environmental conditions with substantial fluctuation of target insect pressure.