One novel standard reference plasmid, namely pUC-RICE5, was constructed as a positive control and calibrator for event-specific qualitative and quantitative detection of genetically modified (GM) rice (Bt63, Kemingdaol, Kefeng6, Kefeng8, and LLRice62). pUC-RICE5 contained fragments of a rice-specific endogenous reference gene (sucrose phosphate synthase) as well as the five GM rice events. An existing qualitative PCR assay approach was modified using pUC-RICE5 to create a quantitative method with limits of detection correlating to approximately 1-10 copies of rice haploid genomes. In this quantitative PCR assay, the square regression coefficients ranged from 0.993 to 1.000. The standard deviation and relative standard deviation values for repeatability ranged from 0.02 to 0.22 and 0.10% to 0.67%, respectively. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (Korea) validated the method and the results suggest it could be used routinely to identify five GM rice events. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.