New Breeding Techniques (NBTs)

Cloned animals: A safe, sustainable source of food and medicine?
It's now possible to clone animals and use them to produce a wide variety of valuable products, including staple foods ...

Podcast: Dogology—The science of our four-legged friends
Geneticist Kat Arney brings you some scientific tails as we explore the genetics of dog breeds and behaviour ...

‘Green’ politics and consumer uncertainty keep GM crops outlawed in Europe. Will gene editing change the legal landscape?
Agronomy grad student Frederik Vilhelm Larsen, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, wants to explore all the science that ...

How CRISPR can create more ethical eggs
Over the past couple of decades, Western consumers have shown an increasing appetite for more ethical eggs. The European Union and ...

Europe’s ‘most cherished’ grape varieties threatened by deadly diseases. CRISPR can help save them
How the latest breeding techniques are saving the taste of our most cherished grape vine varieties. European Seed (ES): Could ...

Climate change vs agriculture: Can one farming method—conventional, organic or agroecology—help slow global warming?
Climate change and agriculture appear joined at the hip. Agriculture—through methane, carbon dioxide, and land use—has had an impact on ...

How are genetically engineered crops regulated around the world?
By employing precise, efficient, yet affordable genome editing techniques, new genome edited crops are entering country regulatory schemes for commercialization. ...

Viewpoint: Gene-edited crop developers need to win public trust. Transparency is how they can do it
In 2009, the genome editing tool CRISPR was introduced, which allows scientists to edit the DNA of organisms such as ...

Podcast: GMO ‘terminator’ seeds debunked; ‘Alternative medicine’ harms women; Cancer-fighting CRISPR beer?
Anti-GMO advocates have for years warned about the dangers of genetically modified, sterile "terminator" seeds. But there's a problem: these ...

Growing food in space may offer sustainability benefits beyond genetically engineering plants on Earth
Sending fancy French grapes into orbit might sound like an expensive PR stunt. There is, after all, a long history ...

Cavendish banana could ‘disappear’ in the 2020s. Can CRISPR gene editing save it from a deadly fungus?
[T]hat the Cavendish banana will disappear sometime in the 2020’s is extremely likely. It is being threatened by a fungus ...

CRISPR could help produce allergen-free soybeans. Here’s how it works
Food allergies occur when you eat .... and your immune system reacts to certain proteins in the food. Proteins that ...

Viewpoint: Challenging organic myths — Big Ag doesn’t ‘control the food supply’ with patented GMO seeds, patented seeds are planted on organic farms, too
GMO critics demonize the concept of seed patents, equating it with 'Big Ag' and what they see as a takeover ...

High-yielding sweet potato that fights vitamin A deficiency could be Ghana’s first gene-edited crop
Research on Ghana’s first gene-edited crop — a high-yielding sweet potato with increased beta carotone content — is under way ...

China announces birth of first gene-edited sheep as country aims to boost domestic meat production
[T]he world's first myostatin gene (MSTN) edited Huyang sheep was born in China, with the technology used to boost the ...

Europe regulates gene-edited crops as GMOs. Will it ever have the tools to detect them?
To enforce GMO restrictions, EU member states first need a way to detect GMOs. So in 2002, the EU set ...

Will Biden Administration preserve Trump USDA’s science-based crop biotechnology rules?
"Listen to the science" was an oft-heard riposte in political debates about how the government should respond to the COVID-19 ...

CRISPR and climate change: Philippines sees crop gene editing as powerful ally in fight against global warming
[Philippines Department of Science and Technology Secretary Fortunado de la Peña has] underscored the importance of [new breeding techniques, or] ...

Demand for high-quality food, innovative medicine expands global market for CRISPR gene editing
The global CRISPR gene editing market was valued at $846.2 million in 2019 and is projected to reach $10,825.1 million ...

Beer that combats cancer? Czech scientists have developed gene edited therapeutic hops but EU biotech restrictions block rollout
Czech researchers from the Biological Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences in České Budějovice are modifying select genes in ...

Higher canola yields without additional farmland: Gene editing could make it happen
What if it were possible to modify the height and shape of canola, so more plants could be grown in ...

‘Vocal anti-GM campaigner’: Organic farmers should abandon opposition to gene editing
The organic sector has been vehemently opposed to genetic technologies in the past, but Alex Smith, vocal anti-GM campaigner and ...

FDA, USDA face off over GE animal regulation: Will agency dispute lead to science-based rules?
[O]n the day before President Biden’s inauguration, USDA released a “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) in which it was purported that ...

Kenya approves 6 gene-edited crops as it pursues food security, sustainable farming
[A]t the Kenya Agricultural Livestock Research Organisation (Karlo) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) biotechnologists are using gene ...

CRISPR-edited chickens immune to avian flu could cut disease spread and help save farmers billions of dollars
Recently, the company [EggXYt] branched out into the field of disease prevention, licencing the GEiGS™ Technology Platform from Tropic Biosciences ...

Podcast: FDA’s double standard? Geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam examines why agency defends GE crops but overregulates GE animals
After more than 30 years of development and regulatory review, AquaBounty's fast-growing, GM salmon is poised to hit US grocery ...

Salt-tolerant, GM Eucalyptus tree has no adverse effects on biodiversity, study finds
[A]n RNA chaperone gene derived from common ice plant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum), alleviated injury and loss of biomass production by salt ...

With GM salmon and lab-grown meat poised to hit the market, 2021 could be a turning point for food technology
The landscape is already changing. The first cell-based chicken appeared on a Singapore restaurant menu in late 2020, and several ...