China has approved the safety of a gene-edited soybean, its first approval of the technology in a crop, as the country increasingly looks to science to boost food production.
The soybean, developed by privately owned Shandong Shunfeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd, has two modified genes, significantly raising the level of healthy fat oleic acid in the plant.
Shunfeng claims to be the first company in China seeking to commercialise gene-edited crops.
It is currently researching around 20 other gene-edited crops, including higher yield rice, wheat and corn, herbicide-resistant rice and soybeans and vitamin C-rich lettuce, said a company representative.
United States-based company Calyxt also developed a high oleic soybean, producing a healthy oil that was the first gene-edited food to be approved in the U.S. in 2019.
Several additional steps are needed before China’s farmers can plant the novel soybean, including approvals of seed varieties with the tweaked genes.
The approval comes as trade tensions, erratic weather and war in major grain exporter Ukraine have increased concerns in Beijing over feeding the country’s 1.4 billion people.
