Materials and methods
Sample material
Sample material was provided by the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority (Oberschleißheim, Germany), except specified otherwise. For the optimisation of the automated DNA extraction, non-gm maize flour, soya bean flour and ground rapeseed were used. The in-house validation was performed using ground seed mixtures. Three thousand non-gm kernels of maize and rapeseed were mixed with one gm kernel resulting in mixtures containing 0.033 % gm material (maize event MON810 and rapeseed Falcon GS40/90). The seed mixtures were ground with a Thermomix mill (Vorwerk, Wuppertal, Germany). Certified reference material from IRMM (Geel, Belgium, GTS 40-3-2 soya bean) and non-gm soya bean flour were used to produce a sample containing 0.033 % gm material. DNA from routine seed samples, provided by the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority (maize, soya bean and rapeseed), were extracted and analysed in order to check the applicability of the automated DNA extraction in the official seed surveillance.