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FarmingScience & TechnologySustainability

Time for the end of GM/GE herbicide tolerant crops?

GeneWatch UK

Publication date: 01/08/2022

The aim of this report is to look at the economic, environmental and social impacts of growing RoundUp Ready (RR) crops and newer HT crops. This report reviews more than 25 years of experience with this technology. We conclude that the cultivation of GM HT crops may be regarded as a temporary aberration, rather than the revolution originally proclaimed by the proponents of these crops. The growing failure of RoundUp Ready crops, due to the spread of glyphosate resistant (GR) weeds, provides an opportunity to phase out the use of RR crops and adopt new methods and technologies. The priority should be to reduce and replace the use of herbicides: not to replace RR crops with other herbicide-tolerant crops, whether or not these are GM crops or produced by different methods.

Resource type: article: Web Page

FarmingFood systemsScience & TechnologySustainability

Digital technology and agroecology: opportunities to explore, challenges to overcome

Véronique Bellon-Maurel, Pascal Bonnet, Isabelle Piot-Lepetit, Ludovic Brossard, Pierre Labarthe, Pierre Maurel, Jean-Yves Courtonne.

Publication date: 01/06/2022

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This chapter will focus on the opportunities and challenges presented by digital technology for agroecology in its broadest sense, i.e. sustainable food systems.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersConservationScience & Technology

Gene Drives in the UK, US, and Australian Press (2015–2019): How a New Focus on Responsibility Is Shaping Science Communication

Aleksandra Stelmach, Brigitte Nerlich, Sarah Hartley

Publication date: 25/01/2022

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Gene drive is a controversial biotechnology for pest control. Despite a commitment from gene drive researchers to responsibility and the key role of the media in debates about science and technology, little research has been conducted on media reporting of gene drive. We employ metaphor and discourse analysis to explore how responsibility is reflected in the coverage of this technology in the U.S., U.K., and Australian press. The findings reveal a rhetorical strategy of trust-building by evoking the moral attributes of gene drive researchers. We discuss the implications of these findings for the communication of new technologies.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Plant & Animal BreedingScience & Technology

Mutation bias reflects natural selection in Arabidopsis thaliana

J. Grey Monroe, et al.

Publication date: 12/01/2022

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Researchers studying Arabidopsis thaliana found that mutations are not random but occur less often in essential and functionally important genes—about half as often within genes and two-thirds less in essential ones. Epigenomic and physical genome features explain over 90% of this variation, and these mutation patterns accurately predict natural genetic diversity. The results show that epigenome-linked mutation bias protects key genes, challenging the traditional view that mutation is a random, directionless process in evolution.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationScience & TechnologySustainability

The complexity of the gene and the precision of CRISPR: What is the gene that is being edited?

Esha Shah, David Ludwig, Phil Macnaghten

Publication date: 26/10/2021

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This article argues that the polarization around the governance of gene editing partly reflects a failure of public engagement with the current state of research in genomics and postgenomics. CRISPR-based gene-editing technology has become embedded in a narrow narrative about the ease and precision of the technique that presents the gene as a stable object under technological control. This narrative fails to position the “ease of CRISPR-based editing” into the wider context of the “complexity of the gene.” While this strategic narrowness of CRISPR narratives aims to create public support for gene-editing technologies, we argue that it stands in the way of socially desirable anticipatory governance and open public dialogue about societal promises and the unintended consequences of gene editing. In addressing the polarization surrounding CRISPR-based editing technology, the article emphasizes the need for engagement with the complex state of postgenomic science that avoids strategic simplifications of the scientific literature in promoting or opposing the commercial use of the gene-editing technology.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Legislation & RegulationScience & Technology

The Generic Risks and the Potential of SDN-1 Applications in Crop Plants

Katharina Kawall

Publication date: 21/10/2021

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This review examines the use of site-directed nuclease 1 (SDN-1) technology in crop plants, which enables precise genetic changes for market-oriented traits but raises regulatory and safety concerns. SDN-1 can create both simple and complex genomic alterations, some comparable to those from natural mutations or conventional breeding. However, analysis shows that nearly half of SDN-1-modified plants exhibit complex genomic changes that could pose new risks. The study emphasizes the need for case-specific risk assessments that consider both the modification process and the final product, to ensure the safety of humans, animals, and the environment under evolving genomic technologies.

Resource type: article: Web Page

FarmingLegislation & RegulationScience & TechnologySustainability

Broadening the GMO risk assessment in the EU for genome editing technologies in agriculture

Katharina Kawall, Janet Cotter, Christoph Then

Publication date: 11/08/2020

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Here, we describe the range of specific unintended effects associated with genome editing. We examine the considerable possibilities to change the genome of plants and animals with SDN-1 and SDN-2 genome editing (i.e. without the insertion of genes conferring the novel trait) and show that genome editing techniques are able to produce a broad spectrum of novel traits that, thus far, were not possible to be obtained using conventional breeding techniques. We consider that the current EU risk assessment guidance for GMOs requires revision and broadening to capture all potential genomic irregularities arising from genome editing and suggest additional tools to assist the risk assessment of genome-edited plants and animals for the environment and food/animal feed in the EU.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Science & TechnologySustainability

Precision Technologies for Agriculture: Digital Farming, Gene-Edited Crops, and the Politics of Sustainability

Jennifer Clapp, Sarah-Louise Ruder

Publication date: 01/08/2020

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This article analyzes the rise of precision technologies for agriculture—specifically digital farming and plant genome editing—and their implications for the politics of environmental sustainability in the agrifood sector. We map out opposing views in the emerging debate over the environmental aspects of these technologies: while proponents see them as vital tools for environmental sustainability, critics view them as antithetical to their own agroecological vision of sustainable agriculture. We argue that key insights from the broader literature on the social effects of technological change—in particular, technological lock-in, the double-edged nature of technology, and uneven power relations—help to explain the political dynamics of this debate. Our analysis highlights the divergent perspectives regarding how these technologies interact with environmental problems, as well as the risks and opportunities they present. Yet, as we argue in the article, developments so far suggest that these dynamics are not always straightforward in practice.

Resource type: article: Web Page

Citizen StakeholdersLegislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingScience & TechnologySustainability

Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier

Maywa Montenegro de Wit

Publication date: 25/02/2020

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Many trends in agricultural biotechnology have extended fluidly from the first era of genetic modification using recombinant DNA techniques to the era of gene editing. But the high-profile, explicit, and assertive discourse of democratization with gene editing — especially CRISPR-Cas9 — is something new.

In this paper, I draw on semi-structured interviews with gene editors, policy analysts, and communications experts as well as with critical academic and civil society experts. I use Science and Technology Studies and political ecology lenses to unpack democratization in three main parts.

First is democratizing discourses: On what grounds is CRISPR said to be democratic? Who is saying so? How do dissident communities respond to these narratives? Second is agricultural applications, with a focus on the Innovative Genomics Institute’s work in developing gene-edited food crops, including a case of saveable clonal hybrid rice. Third is governance, where I contrast US Department of Agriculture regulations and the CRISPRcon conference as “closed” and “invited” spaces, respectively, for democratic participation.

Next, I argue that “created spaces,” in which power is held by typically delegitimized actors and ideas, offer an opening for working out democracy on the terrain of biotechnology. I conclude with a set of principles and practices for CRISPR governance based on the idea that democratization of biotechnology requires epistemic justice. By gathering multiple, partial knowledges together, we move beyond narrow risk-benefit framings to better evaluate not just what CRISPR is and does, but what democracy means and whom it serves.

Resource type: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)

Legislation & RegulationPlant & Animal BreedingScience & Technology

European science community urges rethink on genome editing

John Innes Centre and 126 research institutions

Publication date: 25/07/2019

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Scientists from the John Innes Centre and The Sainsbury Laboratory today joined colleagues from across Europe in calling for an urgent rethink of EU legislation on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).

An open statement signed by 126 research institutes says that scientists and plant breeders in the European Union should be enabled to use gene editing with CRISPR as a faster and more efficient way of producing food sustainably.

Aimed at the newly-elected European Parliament and European Commission, the statement comes one year to the day that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that plants obtained by modern forms of mutagenesis, of which gene-editing is an example, are not exempted from the EU GMO Directive.

Resource type: article: Web Page