Genomic misconception: a fresh look at the biosafety of transgenic and conventional crops. A plea for a process agnostic regulation

The impact of 'framing' in the adoption of GM crops

Genetically modified (GM) crops offer significant advantages in our crop improvement programs because they are created using a more targeted approach which is not possible in traditional breeding methods. Human benefit is one of the main objectives of crop improvement but the legal framework for the introduction of GM crops and the depiction and portrayal of GM crops in the media create barriers to these benefits. This article attempts to highlight the barriers to GM crop adoption particularly focusing on the idea of "framing" and the way GM technology is framed in the media. The resulting public health, economic, and ecological concerns about genetically modified plants, along with the reality of these misconceptions, are discussed with specific examples. Finally, we propose potential routes toward increased acceptance of GM crops.

Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review

Global population is increasing at an alarming rate, posing a threat on the supplies of basic needs and services. However, population increase does not seem to be a common agendum of the global scientists and political leaders. People in the developed countries are more concerned about new technologies and their products. Pseudo-threats related to the uncertainties of genetic engineering of crops and their outputs present on consumers are more audible and controversial than the real difficulties the world is experiencing at the moment and in the future. This review presents brief summaries of the real reasons to worry about and the uncertainties about genetically modified organisms. This article also presents the real uncertainties shared by consumers and scientists with respect to the past, present, and future of genetically engineered organisms. Developments in the field of precision genetics in the recent years and the implications on regulatory, breeding, and socio-cultural dimensions of the global settings are included.

Induced Genetic Variations in Fruit Trees Using New Breeding Tools: Food Security and Climate Resilience

Fruit trees provide essential nutrients to humans by contributing to major agricultural outputs and economic growth globally. However, major constraints to sustainable agricultural productivity are the uncontrolled proliferation of the population, and biotic and abiotic stresses. Tree mutation breeding has been substantially improved using different physical and chemical mutagens. Nonetheless, tree plant breeding has certain crucial bottlenecks including a long life cycle, ploidy level, occurrence of sequence polymorphisms, nature of parthenocarpic fruit development and linkage. Genetic engineering of trees has focused on boosting quality traits such as productivity, wood quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Recent technological advances in genome editing provide a unique opportunity for the genetic improvement of woody plants. This review examines application of the CRISPR-Cas system to reduce disease susceptibility, alter plant architecture, enhance fruit quality, and improve yields. Examples are discussed of the contemporary CRISPR-Cas system to engineer easily scorable PDS genes, modify lignin, and to alter the flowering onset, fertility, tree architecture and certain biotic stresses.

Fruit crops in the era of genome editing: closing the regulatory gap

The conventional breeding of fruits and fruit trees has led to the improvement of consumer-driven traits such as fruit size, yield, nutritional properties, aroma and taste, as well as the introduction of agronomic properties such as disease resistance. However, even with the assistance of modern molecular approaches such as marker-assisted selection, the improvement of fruit varieties by conventional breeding takes considerable time and effort. The advent of genetic engineering led to the rapid development of new varieties by allowing the direct introduction of genes into elite lines. In this review article, we discuss three such case studies: the Arctic^® apple, the Pinkglow pineapple and the SunUp/Rainbow papaya. We consider these events in the light of global regulations for the commercialization of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), focusing on the differences between product-related systems (the USA/Canada comparative safety assessment) and process-related systems (the EU "precautionary principle" model). More recently, genome editing has provided an efficient way to introduce precise mutations in plants, including fruits and fruit trees, replicating conventional breeding outcomes without the extensive backcrossing and selection typically necessary to introgress new traits. Some jurisdictions have reacted by amending the regulations governing GMOs to provide exemptions for crops that would be indistinguishable from conventional varieties based on product comparison. This has revealed the deficiencies of current process-related regulatory frameworks, particularly in the EU, which now stands against the rest of the world as a unique example of inflexible and dogmatic governance based on political expediency and activism rather than rigorous scientific evidence.

Functional nanomaterials to augment photosynthesis: evidence and considerations for their responsible use in agricultural applications

At the current population growth rate, we will soon be unable to meet increasing food demands. As a consequence of this potential problem, considerable efforts have been made to enhance crop productivity by breeding, genetics and improving agricultural practices. While these techniques have traditionally been successful, their efficacy since the 'green revolution' has begun to significantly plateau. This stagnation of gains combined with the negative effects of climate change on crop yields has prompted researchers to develop novel and radical methods to increase crop productivity. Recent work has begun exploring the use of nanomaterials as synthetic probes to augment how plants use light. Photosynthesis in crops is often limited by their ability to absorb and exploit solar energy for photochemistry. The capacity to interact with and optimize how plants use light has the potential to increase the productivity of crops and enable the tailoring of crops for different environments and to compensate for predicted climate changes. Advances in the synthesis and surface modification of nanomaterials have overcome previous drawbacks and renewed their potential use as synthetic probes to enhance crop yields. Here, we review the current applications of functional nanomaterials in plants and will make an argument for the continued development of promising new nanomaterials and future applications in agriculture. This will highlight that functional nanomaterials have the clear potential to provide a much-needed route to enhanced future food security. In addition, we will discuss the often-ignored current evidence of nanoparticles present in the environment as well as inform and encourage caution on the regulation of nanomaterials in agriculture.

A Plea for the Renewal of the ISBR

The recent meeting of the International Society for Biosafety Research (ISBR) focused on so-called genetically modified organisms. For decades, in most regulatory frameworks, recombinant DNA-modified organisms have been the wrong focus of unbalanced agri-food regulations. The ISBR should instead adopt a scientifically defensible and truly risk-based perspective, abandoning a misleading pseudo-category.

The central dogma, "GMO" and defective epistemology

The expression "Genetically Modified Organisms" was coined to indicate a group of agricultural products (mostly crops and vegetables), modified through direct DNA recombination in order to obtain useful phenotypic traits or to inhibit undesirable characteristics. But the border between rDNA ("GMO") and other biotech methods is blurred. Moreover, the ill-assorted group is frequently charged with having peculiar, negative characteristics: many activists, part of the public and a few social science scholars think that "GMOs" are all dubious, even inherently dangerous. However, theoretical justifications of this alleged problematic nature which is supposed to be necessarily linked to the "splicing" of DNA, only when applied to agricultural products, are missing: the only text which tries to go in depth on the subject, an article by biologist Barry Commoner, takes aim at the wrong target, misunderstanding the Central Dogma. "GMO" is a term that has no clear reference, let alone in a detrimental sense. The only attempt to give it epistemological dignity fails.

New GMO regulations for old: Determining a new future for EU crop biotechnology

In this review, current EU GMO regulations are subjected to a point-by point analysis to determine their suitability for agriculture in modern Europe. Our analysis concerns present GMO regulations as well as suggestions for possible new regulations for genome editing and New Breeding Techniques (for which no regulations presently exist). Firstly, the present GMO regulations stem from the early days of recombinant DNA and are not adapted to current scientific understanding on this subject. Scientific understanding of GMOs has changed and these regulations are now, not only unfit for their original purpose, but, the purpose itself is now no longer scientifically valid. Indeed, they defy scientific, economic, and even common, sense. A major EU regulatory preconception is that GM crops are basically different from their parent crops. Thus, the EU regulations are "process based" regulations that discriminate against GMOs simply because they are GMOs. However current scientific evidence shows a blending of classical crops and their GMO counterparts with no clear demarcation line between them. Canada has a "product based" approach and determines the safety of each new crop variety independently of the process used to obtain it. We advise that the EC re-writes it outdated regulations and moves toward such a product based approach.  Secondly, over the last few years new genomic editing techniques (sometimes called New Breeding Techniques) have evolved. These techniques are basically mutagenesis techniques that can generate genomic diversity and have vast potential for crop improvement. They are not GMO based techniques (any more than mutagenesis is a GMO technique), since in many cases no new DNA is introduced. Thus they cannot simply be lumped together with GMOs (as many anti-GMO NGOs would prefer). The EU currently has no regulations to cover these new techniques. In this review, we make suggestions as to how these new gene edited crops may be regulated. The EU is at a turning point where the wrong decision could destroy European agricultural competitively for decades to come.

Fatal attraction: the intuitive appeal of GMO opposition

Public opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) remains strong. By contrast, studies demonstrate again and again that GM crops make a valuable contribution to the development of a sustainable type of agriculture. The discrepancy between public opinion and the scientific evidence requires an explanation. We argue that intuitive expectations about the world render the human mind vulnerable to particular misrepresentations of GMOs. We explain how the involvement of particular intuitions accounts for the popularity, persistence, and typical features of GM opposition and tackle possible objections to our approach. To conclude, we discuss the implications for science education, science communication, and the environmental movement.

Enabling nutrient security and sustainability through systems research

Human and companion animal health depends upon nutritional quality of foods. Seed varieties, seasonal and local growing conditions, transportation, food processing, and storage, and local food customs can influence the nutrient content of food. A new and intensive area of investigation is emerging that recognizes many factors in these agri-food systems that influence the maintenance of nutrient quality which is fundamental to ensure nutrient security for world populations. Modeling how these systems function requires data from different sectors including agricultural, environmental, social, and economic, but also must incorporate basic nutrition and other biomedical sciences. Improving the agri-food system through advances in pre- and post-harvest processing methods, biofortification, or fortifying processed foods will aid in targeting nutrition for populations and individuals. The challenge to maintain and improve nutrient quality is magnified by the need to produce food locally and globally in a sustainable and consumer-acceptable manner for current and future populations. An unmet requirement for assessing how to improve nutrient quality, however, is the basic knowledge of how to define health. That is, health cannot be maintained or improved by altering nutrient quality without an adequate definition of what health means for individuals and populations. Defining and measuring health therefore becomes a critical objective for basic nutritional and other biomedical sciences.

Are we ready for back-to-nature crop breeding?

Sustainable agriculture in response to increasing demands for food depends on development of high-yielding crops with high nutritional value that require minimal intervention during growth. To date, the focus has been on changing plants by introducing genes that impart new properties, which the plants and their ancestors never possessed. By contrast, we suggest another potentially beneficial and perhaps less controversial strategy that modern plant biotechnology may adopt. This approach, which broadens earlier approaches to reverse breeding, aims to furnish crops with lost properties that their ancestors once possessed in order to tolerate adverse environmental conditions. What molecular techniques are available for implementing such rewilding? Are the strategies legally, socially, economically, and ethically feasible? These are the questions addressed in this review.

Next biotech plants: new traits, crops, developers and technologies for addressing global challenges

Most of the genetically modified (GM) plants currently commercialized encompass a handful of crop species (soybean, corn, cotton and canola) with agronomic characters (traits) directed against some biotic stresses (pest resistance, herbicide tolerance or both) and created by multinational companies. The same crops with agronomic traits already on the market today will continue to be commercialized, but there will be also a wider range of species with combined traits. The timeframe anticipated for market release of the next biotech plants will not only depend on science progress in research and development (R&D) in laboratories and fields, but also primarily on how demanding regulatory requirements are in countries where marketing approvals are pending. Regulatory constraints, including environmental and health impact assessments, have increased significantly in the past decades, delaying approvals and increasing their costs. This has sometimes discouraged public research entities and small and medium size plant breeding companies from using biotechnology and given preference to other technologies, not as stringently regulated. Nevertheless, R&D programs are flourishing in developing countries, boosted by the necessity to meet the global challenges that are food security of a booming world population while mitigating climate change impacts. Biotechnology is an instrument at the service of these imperatives and a wide variety of plants are currently tested for their high yield despite biotic and abiotic stresses. Many plants with higher water or nitrogen use efficiency, tolerant to cold, salinity or water submergence are being developed. Food security is not only a question of quantity but also of quality of agricultural and food products, to be available and accessible for the ones who need it the most. Many biotech plants (especially staple food) are therefore being developed with nutritional traits, such as biofortification in vitamins and metals. The main international seed companies continue to be the largest investors in plant biotechnology R&D, and often collaborate in the developing world with public institutions, private entities and philanthropic organizations. These partnerships are particularly present in Africa. In developed countries, plant biotechnology is also used for non-food purposes, such as the pharmaceutical, biofuel, starch, paper and textile industries. For example, plants are modified to specifically produce molecules with therapeutic uses, or with an improved biomass conversion efficiency, or producing larger volumes of feedstocks for biofuels. Various plant breeding technologies are now used in the entire spectrum of plant biotechnology: transgenesis producing proteins or RNAi. Cisgenesis (transgenes isolated from a crossable donor plant) and intragenesis (transgenes originate from the same species or a crossable species), null segregants are also used. To date, the next generation precision gene editing tools are developed in basic research. They include: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM), transcription activator-like effects nucleases (TALENs) and zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN).

Explaining the present GM business strategy on the EU food market: the gatekeepers' perspective

The use of genetically modified (GM) crops and their applications is partially suppressed in European Union (EU) agriculture, even if one would expect otherwise given their complementarity with the neoliberal and industrialised EU agricultural regime in place. By applying a qualitative content analysis, this paper analyses how food manufacturers and retailers (referred to as gatekeepers in the food industry) explain and defend the exclusion of GM-labelled food products on the EU market. The study design places emphasis on the role of perceptions in the strategic behaviour of gatekeepers and on the role of interaction in this regard, as we assume that the way in which gatekeepers perceive the 'rules of the game' for commercialising GM crop applications on the EU food market will be influenced by their interaction with other agribusiness actors. In a first stage, the analysis determines thematic congruence in the (types of) perceptions that explain an agribusiness actor's overall interpretation of the EU business environment for GM crop applications. This perceived 'structuring arena' (SA) for GM crop applications - as conceptualised within our framework - contains areas of either internal and external tensions, that have a compelling or non-committal influence on the agribusiness actor's interpretation. In a second stage, the analysis particularly defines how gatekeepers in the food industry perceive and experience the SA for GM crop applications on the EU market, and how these perceptual tensions subsequently influence their strategic behaviour for GM-labelled products on the EU market. Finally, we highlight how these perceptions and actions (or inaction) suppress the main changes in practice that are necessary to manage this wicked problem.

The politics of Golden Rice

Genetic knowledge applicable to crop improvement has erupted over the past 60 years, and the techniques of introducing genes from one organism to another have enabled new varieties of crops not achievable by previously available methodologies of crop breeding. Research and particularly development of these GMO-crops to a point where they are useful for growers and consumers in most countries is subject to complex national and international rules arising out of the UN's Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity, with 167 country signatories. (The USA and Canada are not signatories.) The Protocol was developed based on concerns initially expressed in the 1970's that such technology presented unusual risks to man and the environment. Those ideas have comprehensively and authoritatively been proven to be wrong. The Protocol has nevertheless spawned significant regulatory obstacles to the development of GMO-crop technology at great cost to global society and in conflict with many other UN objectives. The suspicion induced by the Protocol is also widely used, overtly or covertly, for political purposes. These points are illustrated by reference to the not-for-profit Golden Rice project.

Translational research: from pot to plot

Plant molecular biology has been the key driver to elucidate molecular pathways underlying plant growth, development and stress responses during the past decades. Although this has led to a plethora of available data, the translation to crop improvement is lagging behind. Here, we argue that plant scientists should become more involved in converting basic knowledge into applications in crops to sustainably support food security and agriculture. As the translatability from model species to crops is rather poor, this kind of translational research requires diligence and a thorough knowledge of the investigated trait in the crop. In addition, the robustness of a trait depends on the genotype and environmental conditions, demanding a holistic approach, which cannot always be evaluated under growth chamber and greenhouse conditions. To date, the improved resolution of many genome-wide technologies and the emerging expertise in canopy imaging, plant phenotyping and field monitoring make it very timely to move from the pathway specifics to important agronomical realizations, thus from pot to plot. Despite the availability of scientific know-how and expertise, the translation of new traits to applications using a transgene approach is in some regions of the world, such as Europe, seriously hampered by heavy and nontranslucent legislation for biotech crops. Nevertheless, progress in crop improvement will remain highly dependent on our ability to evaluate improved varieties in field conditions. Here, we plead for a network of protected sites for field trials across the different European climates to test improved biotech traits directly in crops.