With between 20 and 40% of all crops grown being lost to pests and diseases, the UK agriculture industry could hugely benefit from the prosperity that growing gene-edited crops will bring.
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The first challenge is around regulation, especially in cultured meat and plants. Currently, the EU’s rules around gene editing focuses on legal interpretation rather than science – which has restricted the UK’s agricultural research institutions from carrying out research.
For the synthetic plants and meat industry to develop and grow, organisations need to be able to deliver products to market at scale. However, the environment that cells grow in requires very high levels of accuracy, with reproducibility and close control being critical parts of the process. This means enabling mass production is a challenge, as human error and contamination are both a risk when throughput needs to be increased.
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This is where automation and robotics can play an important role. Scientists are talented, skilled individuals, but it can be impossible to manually keep up with both the pace and quality needed to scale development. With automation, it’s possible to run assays faster and for longer than scientists can, by using remote management to run assays through the night for example.
