On July 19, 2021, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced an important proposal through the Federal Register to exempt organisms with three additional types of modifications developed through gene-editing technologies, such as the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated-proteins (CAS) system.
If the proposal was officially adopted after public comments were considered, it would make most gene-edited plants, such as fruit crops, exempt from the federal regulatory requirements imposed on classic genetically modified organisms.
For example, we have recently confirmed a ‘Gala’ apple sport mutation caused by a genomic deletion on one of the homologous chromosomes. Compared with standard ‘Gala’, the sport has much better fruit-keeping quality due to a reduced ethylene production.
Similarly, the deletion could also be made in the genome of other widely grown cultivars, such as ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘McIntosh’, to improve their fruit-keeping quality.
It is expected that the resultant apple plants would differ from their corresponding mother plants by the targeted deletion only, similar to the aforementioned difference between ‘Gala’ and the ‘Gala’ sport.
As such, it would be hard to envision how the genome-edited apples would pose any risks to the environment.
