That tension surfaced during a discussion at the American Seed Trade Association Vegetable and Flower Conference on the road from concept to crop. The message was clear: speed in the lab does not automatically translate to speed on the shelf.
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Pairwise vice president of regulatory and government affairs Dan Jenkins says gene editing accelerates breeding, but it does not replace it.
Gene editing still carries the shadow of earlier biotech battles. Jenkins argues that the industry itself sometimes perpetuates outdated narratives.
“A lot of times, industry is in its own way too,” Jenkins says. …
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He urges companies to treat gene editing as what it is.
“It’s just another tool to achieve a breeding outcome,” Jenkins says. “That’s all it is.”
That framing shifts the conversation away from ideology and back to agronomy, quality and performance. It encourages companies to present gene editing as a refinement of plant improvement rather than a disruptive break from it.
