Variability of allergenicity within 29 genotypes including some genetically modified genotypes

Background Breeding of cereals has been particularly active in the last hundred years, resulting in spectacular improvements in agronomic, resistance or technological traits. Unfortunately for predisposed consumers wheat may induce allergenicity either food or respiratory. More recently, the genetic modification (GM) technology for crop improvement has emerged and although GM wheats are not cultivated at the moment, it is not excluded that they are being produced. In the frame of GM evaluation and according to the codex Alimentarius, the allergenicity has to be evaluated. In this work we intend to measure the allergenicity of GM wheat lines, their parents and to compare it to a set of cultivated varieties for which the “history of safe use” is not or poorly documented.