2018 ASHS Annual Conference

Genetically engineered crops continue to be a controversial issue. GE approaches to cultivar development include a broad spectrum of techniques from conventional plant breeding and tissue culture to advanced gene editing approaches such as CRISPR/CAS9. The policy debate of whether New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs) such as gene editing, will be regulated as genetically engineered crops in horticulture and other crops continues and has not been resolved. A number of GE technologies exist in the regulatory and/or the decision making pipeline which will be released commercially in the near future. Within this pipeline, NPBTs offer a number of advantages that make them attractive to the public sector worldwide. However, if regulated as GE crops, they may face the same fate of regulatory uncertainty and may not reach end users. The state of affairs in most developing and some developed countries is that of an increasingly complex policy and regulatory landscape. Thus the need exists for innovative strategies to ensure deployment of valuable technologies that may be released by public, private and multi-sector collaborations in the near future. This presentation will examine policy issues related to private and public sectors R&D and deployment of GE crops including those developed using NPBTs. This presentation will also update the current status of GE crops globally, examine the role that policies and regulations may have over technology choice and the level of investments necessary to generate knowledge and thus reduce uncertainty by the public and private sectors with a focus on NPBTs such as gene editing. The presentation concludes with a tentative overview of the challenges and recommendations to support GE crops’ innovation globally.