Fresh perspectives are paving the way for a boom in precision-bred crops.
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Dr. Jennifer Cuzmabelieves more and more gene-edited foods will be coming onto the market in 2025.
With the potential to enhance crop traits such as disease resistance, drought tolerance, shelf-life, and nutritional value, gene-edited (or precision-bred) crops may be key to addressing many of the world’s most pressing agricultural challenges, from food security to climate shifts and the need for more sustainable farming practices.
Gene-edited crops have small, targeted genomic edits that result in changes that could have occurred in nature or in conventional plant breeding programs. Regulations are starting to reflect this as they begin to open up across the world, making commercialization more attractive to companies and consumers.
In the U.S. and Japan, where these regulations are already less restrictive, several new gene-edited products have been released, including seedless blackberries, better-tasting mustard greens, and tomatoes with higher levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
“In the U.S., there’s a greater diversity of companies and universities submitting products for approval to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and a greater variety of crops,” says Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, a Professor in Science and Technology Policy and Co-Director of the institution’s Genetic Engineering and Society Centre at North Carolina State University.
“The regulatory process has been streamlined to allow most gene-edited crops to go through without a formal risk assessment or mandatory environmental assessment,” she adds. “With the certainty in the regulatory system and the lower stringency of assessments that are needed, I think we’re going to continue to see a proliferation of gene-edited plants in the field and a greater diversity, with more than just large companies putting them to
Dr. Cathie Martin Martin is currently developing a gene-edited, biofortified tomato that contains higher levels of vitamin D.
What about Europe?
In Europe, the food landscape remains resolutely gene edit-free, with stringent regulations restricting the commercial cultivation of both genetically modified and gene-edited crops, which have historically been classified as the same under EU regulations. But that’s changing. On February 7, 2024, the European Parliament voted to ease the regulations on new genomic techniques, marking a shift in the EU’s approach to gene editing. At the time of writing, the regulatory position across EU states remains under debate as individual nations decide whether to adopt the broader EU position. In the United Kingdom, only England now allows gene-edited crops to be grown and is yet to ratify a law that will enable farmers to sell their produce.
“It’s frustratingly slow, but I would say that there’s enormous business interest in [approving gene editing],” says Professor Cathie Martin, a plant biologist and geneticist at the John Innes Centre in the UK. “If Europe doesn’t adopt gene editing, they will be out of the game because other people will be able to breed new varieties so much more quickly.”
Martin is currently developing a biofortified tomato that contains higher levels of vitamin D – a much-needed product, where sunlight exposure is limited and vitamin D deficiency poses a significant public health risk.”
Crimson, Magenta, and Indigo tomatoes gene-edited to produce the health protective pigments found in other berries. Photo credit: JIC Photography
Making a world of difference
With steps towards the gradual global harmonization of regulations, there is a growing sense of opportunity around new genomic techniques and their potential benefits. There is also increasing recognition that CRISPR-Cas technology not only facilitates faster breeding and the development of better, more resilient crops, but is also affordable (in relative terms) and therefore accessible to developing countries, where solutions are needed most.
Dr. Cecilia Limera says that African countries need gene editing technologies to improve food security.
“Africa has so many challenges, from insect pests and diseases to weather shifts,, which has complicated everything by bringing drought on board,” says Dr. Cecilia Limera, a Kenya-based Biotechnologist and Program Officer at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF-Africa). “We need technologies that will give us a faster way of mitigating these problems.”
One such problem is Striga, or ‘witchweed’, a root parasitic plant that poses a devastating risk to African farmers. “Other western countries have probably never seen Striga, but for us it’s a really big problem, causing 80-100% losses in smallholder farmers’ yields.”
“If we don’t look for a solution to our own problem, nobody else is going to do that for us,” says Limera. Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Malawi and Zambia are already fully on board with gene editing, and Ethiopia is expected to follow suit within the next year, she says.
“This technology is needed in Africa to solve some of our problems,” says Limera. “It’s important for us, and that’s why most of the African countries have decided to develop their own regulations and go ahead with the technology, despite what’s happening in Europe. We are focusing on increasing our food security through increasing our own yields and diverting the money that would have been spent on food imports to other vital sectors such as health.”
What’s on the horizon?
In May 2024, U.S. plant biologist Dr. Georg Jander delivered a presentation to the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, calling targeted gene editing “the next agricultural revolution”. Jander’s research at the Boyes Thompson Institute focuses on insect resistance and medicinal compounds, with his team using CRISPR to identify the genes involved in these essential processes.
Dr. Georg Jander calls targeted gene editing the next agricultural revolution.
In addition to the development of better food crops, Jander predicts that the broader acceptance of gene- edited technology will lead to the commercialization of minor crops that aren’t fully domesticated. Dr. Joyce Van Eck’s group at the Boyce Thompson Institute is trying to domesticate groundcherry, also known as Physalis, which is a member of the Solanaceae family of plants and originated in South America, he explains.
The goal is to transform these from garden novelties to mainstream crops that could one day be a common sight alongside blueberries and blackberries in grocery stores.
“Groundcherries were given that name because all their fruit drops down to the ground, which you don’t want if you’re growing them commercially. We already have a pretty good idea of which genes would need to be knocked out (having identified them in other plants), so we could basically take a domestication process that could have taken centuries and condense it down to years.”
Beyond potential agricultural applications, groundcherry and goldenberry serve as valuable model species for studying the Solanaceae family, which includes economically important crops like tomatoes and potatoes. The researchers also hope to unravel how these plants naturally resist certain pests and then apply this knowledge to other crops.
Dr. Kuzma agrees that 2025 will be a year of promise and plenty: “I think we’ll start to see more products for consumer benefits, such as seedless foods and healthier greens that taste better, as well as a rise in consumer niche products. I think we’ll see a greater diversity of fruits and vegetables – because it’s easier to get buy-in for these types of products – as well as more research into herbicide tolerance, pest protection and drought resilience.”
Grains of barley where CRISPR-Cas9 has been used to know out the gene controlling hull adhesion. Photo credit: JIC Photographyv
I believe there will be some breakthroughs in genome-editing reagent delivery and transgene- free genome editing in the coming year. These progresses will help expand the reach of genome- editing technologies to more crops and varieties. They will also help accelerate the development of genome-edited products from labs to the marketplace.”
Dr. Yiping Qi
Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland.
From better, bolder food crops to biofortified tomatoes and foods with a longer shelf-life, like non-browning apples and mushrooms, many fascinating gene edited products are already well on their way to fruition. And with the increasing pressures posed by a changing climate and the need to feed an ever-growing human population, the time for change is now – and there’s really no time to waste, she concludes.
Testing new traits in the UK
On March 24, 2023, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act passed into English law, allowing researchers, agricultural companies, and farmers to develop and cultivate gene edited crops. One such organization is BOFIN (The British On-Farm Innovation Network), which connects farmers and scientists to promote collaboration and drive agricultural innovation.
Under a recently announced government-funded initiative, PROBITY (a Platform to Rate Organisms Bred for Improved Traits and Yield), gene-edited crops are expected to be growing in UK farmers’ fields in fall 2025 for the first time.
During 2025, the PROBITY team will be recruiting farmers in England to multiply up to three new gene edited traits: a line of Cadenza wheat that contains lower levels of an enzyme that can produce a carcinogenic compound when heated, a line of Fielder wheat with a larger grain size, and a high-lipid feed that reduces the amount of supplementation cattle require and their methane emissions.
BOFIN founder Tom Allen-Stevens says the team will analyze the differences between the gene-edited and their unedited counterparts. Many other exciting new traits are also on the team’s radar, including a drought- resistant wheat with deeper roots, one that’s completely resistant to yellow rust, and even a high-iron wheat that could help combat the global problems caused by anemia.
