AGRO and the latest plant breeding techniques

The expectation and perspective of this was strengthened at the end of January, after the French Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie announced that France does not perceive crops bred by re-editing as genetically modified organisms. With this announcement, France is on the same track as was announced by the UK before leaving the EU, and which was highlighted when the British Minister of Agriculture announced earlier this month that the UK's exit from the EU now allowed them to formulate their own rules about these techniques.

But why these very explicit announcements on this very topic? In a knowledge synthesis on new plant breeding techniques, prepared by the Section for Crop Genetics and Biotechnology in 2018, we review, among other things, how the latest techniques are obvious tools to contribute to solving environmental and climate challenges in agriculture. The view is shared by many, and the Ethics Council has in a statement from 2019 concluded that it is ethically problematic to reject technologies such as CRISPR if they can help mitigate or solve significant problems.

In 2018, however, the European Court of Justice ruled that the new techniques cannot be exempted via the mutagenesis exception in Annex 1B of the Release Directive. The mutants are to be considered as GM plants. Perhaps not so surprising, as the new techniques were not invented when the directive was written in 2001.

But what will happen if the new techniques remain regulated as pure GMO organisms? Here we can look at how things have gone for the development with GM crops. Since the beginning in 1996, the cultivation area with GM plants has been increasing linearly. In 2018, 78% of all soybeans, 76% of cotton, 30% of maize, and 29% of all oilseed rape were GMOs worldwide. GM crops are thus widespread, but are offered exclusively by a small handful of very large companies with a focus on agro-chemicals. GM approval costs are so high that virtually only the same group of very large companies can afford to get GM crops approved. Thus, there is a real monopoly on GM crops, and there is no doubt that the same will happen with the new techniques if no consensus can be reached on the French and English announcements.

The Department of Agroecology is currently running a number of projects that use e.g. CRISPR technology. There is hardly any single technology that can solve the environmental and climate challenges that exist in agriculture, but at the same time we cannot afford to discard new technology. 

We look forward to contributing new plant breeding techniques.