# Council Directive 2005/25/EC of 14 March 2005 amending Annex VI to Directive 91/414/EEC as regards plant protection products containing micro-organisms (Text with EEA relevance), Division 2.2.1.2: The ability of micro-organisms to adapt to the environment must be evaluated. In particular, Member States must take account of the following principles:

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

(a) depending on the conditions (e.g. availability of substrates for growth and metabolism) micro-organisms can switch on or off the expression of given phenotypic traits;
(b) the microbial strains most adapted to the environment can survive and multiply better than the non-adapted strains. Adapted strains have a selective advantage and can form the majority within a population after a number of generations;
(c) the relatively rapid multiplication of micro-organisms leads to a higher frequency of mutations. If a mutation is promoting survival in the environment, the mutant strain can become dominant;
(d) the properties of viruses, in particular, can change rapidly, including their virulence.
Therefore, where appropriate, information on the genetic stability of the micro-organism under the environmental conditions of proposed use must be evaluated, as well as information on the micro-organism's capacity to transfer genetic material to other organisms and information on the stability of encoded traits.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2005/25/annex/division/B/division/2/division/2.2/division/2.2.1/division/2.2.1.2 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-directive-2005-25/annex/division-B/division-2/division-2.2/division-2.2.1/division-2.2.1.2
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.