The European Union"s rice imports from Asian countries such as India may increase after consignments from the U.S. were found to have traces of unauthorized genetic modification last year, European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said Tuesday.

"We have asked the U.S. to provide us with evidence that rice consignments to E.U. doesn"t contain the unapproved genetic modification," Boel told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. "(Such U.S. consignments) become more expensive and therefore the E.U. is also looking eastwards at other markets (to buy rice)."