Getting acceptance for gene editing

Getting acceptance for gene editing

The Council for Agricultural Science and Technology offers recommendations to ensure plant breeding tech continues to benefit agriculture

Reading Time: 2 minutes The rapid pace of change brought by genome editing tools has created many new opportunities for the agri-food industry, but they aren’t without challenges. Regulatory hurdles must be considered, and the tools must benefit society as well as the agriculture industry.

File photo of a CFIA vehicle. (Dave Bedard photo)

Gene-edited crops clear CFIA’s regulatory bar

Agency guidance puts gene editing on level of conventional breeding

Plants gene-edited for efficient use of water or nutrients or to better withstand pests or drought now won’t have to clear the same regulatory hurdles in Canada as any crops that are modified for herbicide tolerance or include foreign genes. Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Wednesday announced updated guidance from the Canadian Food Inspection […] Read more


Having proven gene editing can produce shorter canola that would be subject to less lodging, U of Calgary researchers are now using this cutting-edge technology to reduce pod shatter and boost protein content in canola, says Professor Marcus Samuel.

Gene editing produces breakthrough canola variety

Shorter, highly branched canola plants with more pods show the power of the cutting-edge technology

Reading Time: 4 minutes University of Calgary researchers have used gene editing to bring to life a new shorter, highly branched variety of canola that has more pods and is easier to harvest. “Based on my conversations with some people in the agriculture industry — including primary producers — they would love to have a crop like this,” said […] Read more

This illustration shows how CRISPR-Cas9 technology could be used to genomically edit a species of the streptococcus bacterium. The Cas9 nuclease protein (in blue) uses a guide RNA sequence (purple) to cut DNA (green) at a complementary site.

Where are the Canadian genome-editing startups?

Looser regulations give the U.S. an edge in GE product development, but Canadians are working on gene editing, too

Reading Time: 4 minutes Genome editing has made some major strides in the past year. Minnesota-based Calyxt struck a deal with a processor to make oil from its GE soybeans, in which the genes responsible for trans fats have been ‘turned off.’ And SU Canola (a sulfonyurea herbicide-resistant variety) was given its Canadian commercial release a year ago by […] Read more



The grand chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in Luxembourg. (Curia.europa.eu)

GMO rules cover plant gene editing technique, top EU court says

Brussels | Reuters — Crops obtained by plant breeding technique mutagenesis should fall under laws restricting the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Europe’s highest court said on Wednesday, in a victory for environmental campaigners. The biotech industry had argued that much of mutagenesis, or gene editing, is effectively little different to the mutagenesis that […] Read more


Genome editing will not only revolutionize plant breeding, it will offer advances with wide public benefits such as making crops more resilient in the face of climate change, says Stacy Singer, a forage breeder and biotechnologist at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre. Singer is shown here with sainfoin plants, a bloat-free type of alfalfa. Her colleague, Surya Acharya, bred a more hardy variety of the forage using conventional methods but the breeding process took many years.

The next frontier of plant breeding

Advocates say game-changing genome editing is completely different from genetic engineering — but will the public agree?

Reading Time: 6 minutes Farmers need to get in front of the messaging about genome editing technology — or risk seeing it suffer the same fate as GMOs in the court of public opinion. That’s the warning from the chair of Alberta Wheat’s research committee, who is one of many who fears genome editing is going to get lumped […] Read more



(Jack Dykinga photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

U.S. patent agency to weigh rival claims on CRISPR

Reuters — The U.S. patent agency on Tuesday will hear arguments in a heated dispute over who was first to invent a revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. Hundreds of millions of dollars may be at stake, as the technology promises commercial applications in treating genetic diseases, engineering crops, and other areas. CRISPR works as […] Read more