Highly pathogenic avian influenza, known as bird flu, has spread to new corners of the globe since 2022, wiping out millions of poultry birds and send- ing egg and turkey prices soaring. 

Experts warn that mutations could potentially threaten a human pandemic, though the current strain has not caused significant disease in people. 

Researchers said they used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to make specific changes to a gene called ANP32 that is essential to support flu viruses inside chickens’ cells. CRISPR is a type of molecular “scissor” technology that scientists can use to edit DNA. 

Flu viruses hijack proteins like ANP32 inside cells to help themselves replicate, and the edits in chickens were designed to stop the growth of bird flu. 

Upticks in cases tend to occur during the spring and autumn migration of wild birds that transmit the virus, and the U.S. last week reported its first case since April in a commercial flock. 

Experiments showed that almost all the gene-edited chickens showed resistance to lower doses of a less lethal form of bird flu than the H5N1 strain that has circulated the globe recently, said Wendy Barclay, a flu expert and professor at the Imperial College of London. 

When birds were exposed to much higher levels of the virus, though, about half of the gene- edited chickens had breakthrough infections, she said. 

“We can move toward making chickens resistant to the virus but we’re not there yet. We would need more edits – more robust edits – to really shut down the virus replication.” 

Researchers now think that making three specific genetic changes to chickens’ cells will better protect birds. However, they have not bred chickens with three edits yet, said Helen Sang, who previously studied genetically modifying chickens against bird flu at the University of Edinburgh. 

Sang said scientists found that genetic modification would not work well enough. 

Unlike genetic modification, which introduces foreign genes, gene editing alters existing genes. 

The technology is considered to be less controversial than genetic modification and is more lightly regulated in some countries. 

“The way forwards here is not to rely on single edits but to use a combination of them,” Barclay said. 

France last month became the first country in the European Union to vaccinate poultry against the virus. 

However, that strategy led the U.S. to impose trade restrictions on French poultry imports, citing a risk of introducing the virus into the country because vaccinated birds may not show signs of infection.

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Logan Skori grew up on an 1,800-acre mixed farming operation near Kinsella. His favourite childhood memory, which inspired his academic career, is riding in a combine with his father.

“I love harvest time,” said the 31-year-old. “To me, that was kind of the best part of the year. That was always the pinnacle of the season to me.”

After high school, he thought about going into medicine, but his curiosity about crops pushed him toward plant biology. He worked summers for Crop Production Services and Viterra and after getting his degree in plant biology, joined Nutrien as a crop advisor and salesperson.

“I got to know some of the guys heading up the innovation team at Nutrien,” he said. “I was always interested in what they had to say and what they were breeding and developing. That was one of the reasons why I decided to go back to school, and I ended up finishing my PhD in plant science this past April.”

But before graduating, and armed with a $200,000 grant from Innovate Calgary, he started Ag Gene in 2020 with the aim of increasing protein in canola, peas, soybeans and rice. He has already filed provisional patents on some of his ideas.

“We kind of had our ‘aha moment’ where we had developed some transgenic canola that had anywhere from 15 per cent to 20 per cent increase in crude protein content, and from there we obviously had to go back to the drawing board, as the regulatory landscape on GMOs is quite difficult to bring to life in a commercial setting,” he said.

“Ultimately we landed on using gene editing to basically make slight modifications to a DNA blueprint to help drive the amount of protein.”

Skori’s current focus is on canola and he has several groups interested in collaboration in hopes of starting field trials in 2023. In the end, his research is about feeding the world’s growing population.

“A lot of reports suggest that by the year 2050, the global demand for protein is expected to double,” he said. “Right now, there’s a bit of a stigma attached to protein sources from animals. People are starting to look at these alternative sources of protein.”

If Ag Gene can deploy a portfolio of high-protein seeds to market, it could give food manufacturers a chance to buy protein isolates at a lower cost, said Skori. He is interested in the humanitarian aspect of plant breeding and new agriculture technologies.

“When you look at the sheer protein deficiencies across the world, I think nearly a billion people every day don’t get enough protein in their diets,” he said. “When you start to think about solutions, to me one of the easiest and most practical solutions is developing high-protein seeds that can be distributed to people. Their life would depend on it.”

If Skori is successful in bringing high-protein seeds to market, there may be a benefit to farmers in terms of input costs, said market analyst Brennan Turner.

This year’s crop is the most expensive ever planted on the Prairies and crops engineered to produce more protein could result in less fertilizer use, he said.

“If I’m potentially using Ag Gene’s variety, maybe instead of putting 100 pounds of nitrogen down per acre, maybe I only need to use 50 pounds,” said Turner. “For the average farm that’s tens of thousands of dollars.”

Upping protein content in nitrogen-fixing pulses is another promising avenue, said Skori.

“If you can get more protein without synthetic fertilizer, that all of a sudden is a pretty hot topic, especially when looking at fertilizer prices and environmental impact.”

Answering the questions generated by Skori’s research will likely take years, said Turner, noting agriculture needs more innovators like him to place future farmers in a better position to succeed.

“People who come from the farm understand the dynamics of how the farm operates,” he said. “And this is where most of the plant biotechnology and innovation is coming from.

“In my opinion it’s coming from people who understand the soil, who understand plants, and are applying their education and knowledge to the problems they’ve experienced their entire lives.”

Farmers could benefit from canola varieties that boost protein and maintain oil content, said Chris Vervaet, executive director of the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association.

“The higher the protein, the higher the value of your crop,” he said. “But the same can be said for higher oil content, keeping in mind that factors like yield need to be considered as well. In a perfect world, we want it all. We want a canola that has high yields, high oil content and high protein content. We are always supportive of research that can check all those boxes.”

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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 San Diego plant-breeding company Cibus.

One of the things that stands out about these two companies is their names. They are not Bayer, Syngenta, DowDuPont, or other big global players usually associated with ag biotech. Rather, both are relatively new, smaller companies for which relatively cheap GE technology has opened a new world of opportunity.

So where are the homegrown Canadian GE startups?

At this point, there are few as far as anyone knows. However, academic institutions and well-funded ag biotech companies are digging into the space, said Gijs van Rooijen, chief scientific officer with Genome Alberta, a major funder of public genomic research in the province.

“There is a lot of private research occurring at commercial entities that is not directly visible to the general public,” he said. “At the same time, there is significant research happening at publicly funded academic institutions.”

For researchers, private or public, the process of genome editing (also called gene editing) has greatly reduced costs. Technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 allow for a much faster process — possibly up to 90 per cent faster, according to some experts — than traditional crossbreeding or transgenic mutation (the technology used to create genetically modified organisms). This has thrown open the field of ag biotech to a host of new players.

Genome Alberta is funding some of that work, particularly projects examining the genomics of cattle and what is possible in terms of reducing feed inefficiency and methane emissions. The findings may have implications for GE work in the future, but van Rooijen said any objectives will likely be realized through traditional breeding as there is currently little social licence for genome-edited cattle.

“To date, there are no genome-edited animals approved for commercial use and the question remains whether or not society will be comfortable with this technology as applied to animals,” said van Rooijen.

And even though genome-editing technology is relatively inexpensive, ag biotech is a tough business with high costs of entry, said van Rooijen.

In fact, any Canadian biotech startup with a new GE crop would likely want to look at commercializing it south of the border, where a far different regulatory approach exists. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ruled GE plants are not GMOs, which allows genome-edited products to get to market faster and with minimal vetting.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, on the other hand, has ‘plants with novel traits’ regulations. Under this system, it doesn’t matter if a new plant breed comes via traditional crossbreeding, genetic modification or genome editing — if it’s got a novel trait, it is subject to a rigorous, and often lengthy approval, process.

While the U.S. approach may be good for GE developers, Canada’s product-focused regulatory approach is better from an overall safety perspective, said van Rooijen.

“I think regulating byproduct is the right way to go,” he said. “There are plant species that are not very healthy for humans to consume. If someone wanted to commercialize a toxic plant species for human consumption — even if the toxic trait has been removed — you really want to make sure they are regulated based on product to assure they are safe for human and animal consumption.”

In its simplest definition, genome editing involves the ability to turn plant genes ‘on’ or ‘off’ depending on what trait you’re focused on — there is no introduction of foreign material or lengthy crossbreeding necessary. Advances in gene sequencing have given researchers the ability to quickly identify where genes are located on the cellular level, enabling the genome editing process and making it faster.

Although not specifically related to GE, Genome Alberta is funding several genome sequencing research projects in livestock. Genome sequencing is an important precursor to genome editing because it helps researchers identify the traits and associated genes they wish to emphasize or silence. Public acceptance will need to be won before genome editing becomes an important tool in livestock researchers’ tool boxes, but a better understanding of the genome is also important for traditional breeding.

“Genomics is being used to learn everything there is to learn about the cow genome — which genes are responsible for particular traits and the benefits of breeding those traits into the commercial stock,” said van Rooijen. “It will be really informative to cow-calf breeders to determine which bull to breed with which cow in order to come up with a progeny that is going to be better than what they started out with.

“If you can try to understand what is causing that variation then you can start breeding for cows that have a reduced methane output. By doing so, we’re basically developing cows that are better for the environment.”

Meanwhile, government researchers are thinking about how GE technology can help alfalfa producers deal with climate change. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers Stacy Singer in Lethbridge and London, Ont. colleague Abdelali Hannoufa are looking at how to introduce resistance to drought, salt, and abiotic stresses into alfalfa.

“There are wild relatives of alfalfa that are very tolerant to drought and salt — much more so than cultivated alfalfa,” said Singer. “We’re trying to identify which genes are the cause of this enhancement in drought tolerance in these wild relatives compared to alfalfa.

“We are targeting different genes that AAFC London has shown previously to be involved in some of these processes,” said Singer. “We are trying out different strategies hoping that some might work better than others in alfalfa.”

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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 in with genetic modification in the minds of the public.

“I think part of the problem with the current resistance to GMOs is because it was not well publicized. It was a disgrace actually,” said Lacombe-area producer Terry Young. “The technology came out and 10 years later, the public found out what it was being used for and then they were all up in arms because they didn’t have awareness of or input into the process.

“We need to set the record straight and do so in a more timely fashion.”

Genome editing is fundamentally different from genetic engineering. Unlike the latter, the process doesn’t involve inserting a gene from another species. Instead, a very small part of a plant’s DNA is removed or modified. The technique is so precise, scientists compare it to changing a bit of text in a document — hence the term editing.

• Read more: The rules are still being written for genome editing

For plant breeders, one use of this technology — sometimes called ‘gene silencing’ — is particularly promising. In traditional breeding, scientists take a plant with a desirable trait (such as resistance to a particular disease) and cross it with a commercial variety. However, it’s not just that one gene that shows up in the offspring, but a bunch of them. Invariably, some have negative impacts (frequently that includes reduced yield). So the old-fashioned way is to make lots of backcrosses with the high-yielding commercial parent in hopes of eventually getting one that has both the sought-after new trait and all of the attributes of the commercial variety. Typically several backcrosses are needed — which takes time, costs money, and is hit and miss.

But if you can identify the genes in the first cross that are causing a problem (such as suppressing yield) and then edit (or silence) them so they are not fully expressed, you can — in theory — go from start to finish in one step. Alternatively, a desired genetic trait could be transferred directly from one variety (of the same crop species) to another.

That’s a big difference from a scientific point of view, but whether the public will see it that way is still up in the air. And the battle lines have been drawn for some time.

Genome editing is GMOs because the technology still changes the fundamental makeup of plant material, Brise Tencer of the Organic Farming Research Foundation told the New York Times three years ago.

“They take a term (genome editing) that sounds really wonderful, but genetic engineering is genetic engineering,” Tencer said.

In February, genome editing took a bit of a public relations hit when U.S.-based plant-breeding company Cibus released SU Canola, a variety developed with genome editing technology, in Canada. At the same time the company announced its support of the #NonGMO project. Some saw the move as a kick in the teeth to farmers growing genetically modified crops and took to Twitter to express their dismay.

However, Young is optimistic consumers will support the technology if there is sufficient education and awareness.

“Those who are familiar with it think it’s going to be a benefit, but those who aren’t too familiar with gene editing are unaware of its potential,” he said. “My thinking is if everyone was educated about the technology it would be very positive, because it allows a much cheaper alternative to modifying the plant than even genetic modification.”

Precision surgery

The two most prevalent genome editing technologies are Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and Cibus’ proprietary Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS), which the company used to develop its sulfonylurea-resistant SU Canola. Both target removal of undesirable traits in plants and animals.

“For me, genome editing is like surgery. It’s really, really precise. We have to know what we’re targeting before we do it,” said Stacy Singer, a researcher with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research and Development Centre. “It has potential to be a lot faster than conventional breeding methods. It’s really different from anything that has been used for breeding purposes before.”

And the end results are “pretty much identical to what you would get with a conventional breeding method,” she added.

“With conventional breeding, however, you get a whole bunch of other changes and you don’t know where in the genome any of those changes have happened because it’s all random.”

The CRISPR process involves a specific protein called Cas9 — which has been likened to a set of genetic scissors that essentially ‘cuts’ the DNA — and a single guide RNA which takes the Cas9 to the chosen DNA location. The result is a very small change in the DNA.

“Once you’ve got that change, the Cas9 protein and single guide RNA are either simply degraded in the plant cell or removed, so you’re only left with the edit,” said Singer. “It’s pretty much an immune system from a bacteria that has been harnessed and changed to elicit genome editing.” Cibus’ RTDS system is more complicated, but ultimately results in the same precise targeting of DNA.

“The sky’s the limit really,” said Singer. “What genome editing can do depends on what growers and industry are looking for, what they’re having trouble with in that moment, or if they foresee a problem in the future. Those are the sort of things we’re hoping to target.”

Targeting the potential effects of climate change with genome editing is a priority at Singer’s lab (and many others).

“We would like to make forage crops more resilient to things like drought or salt, for example,” she said. “But there are all kinds of things we could potentially improve in forage crops, such as reducing the risk of bloat in livestock from the forages that they eat.

“It’s not necessarily that we will be able to do everything using genome editing, but I think it will kind of open doors for us and speed things up.”

Crop producers would like to see a host of improvements, said Young.

“There are possibilities in targeting photosynthetic efficiencies, reducing reliance on inputs, making crops more drought tolerant, and nitrogen and water use more efficient,” he said.

Gaining acceptance

The second item on Young’s list — reduced inputs — illustrates another facet of the ‘genome editing is different’ discussion.

Singer said she is worried that the development of genome edited applications will go down the path that produced GMOs — a business model focused on whichever products make the most money. She said she would rather see participants throughout the ag value chain have a say in how the technology can best serve their businesses.

“With GM, for example, the regulatory process is so expensive that it has been limited to large corporations,” said Singer. “On the one hand that’s fine, but the traits that get improved tend to be the things that will make money because that’s how corporations work.

“We really need to work towards finding a way for everyone to be working on this so we can get some things out there that are beneficial to people that they would really like or really want.”

Young expects most farmers will welcome new crop varieties created with the new technology.

“I think you’re going to find various producers on side with all kinds of pros and cons of a certain technology,” he said. “But typically it’s only a couple per cent that are really hardcore against it. Then you see a group in the middle that needs more information. Then you see people on the other side who are hardcore for it.

“I would say — and this is my opinion — that more producers will definitely be for it.”

The post The next frontier of plant breeding appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

However, the regulation of genome edited crop varieties is still up for debate.

In March, the U.S. agriculture secretary said his officials won’t regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques.

“With this approach, USDA seeks to allow innovation when there is no risk present,” said Sonny Perdue. “At the same time, I want to be clear to consumers that we will not be stepping away from our regulatory responsibilities. While these crops do not require regulatory oversight, we do have an important role to play in protecting plant health by evaluating products developed using modern biotechnology.”

So, too, does the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Food and Drug Administration. The latter doesn’t have formal guidelines on plant varieties using genetic editing, but has said it will rigorously oversee any animals altered by the technology.

In Europe, some farm groups and scientists are pushing EU authorities to take the same stance as the USDA. But many environmental groups and others want genetically edited varieties to be subject to the same rules as GMOs — a costly and time-consuming regulatory barrier that could prevent commercialization of such varieties in Europe.

In Canada, genomic edited products are defined as Plants with Novel Traits and regulated on a case-by-case basis.

“In Canada we’re fortunate that the process is not regulated — it’s the outcome or the product that is regulated,” said Terry Young, a farmer and chair of Alberta Wheat’s research committee. “That’s a good thing because then you don’t have lapses in regulation while people try to determine if this new technology is acceptable or not.”

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But considering the variety of farms around the world, and that most of them are very small compared to the Canadian average, combative conversation is really rather unwarranted and, in many cases, an uneducated dialogue.

When one disparages farms that are organic or ones that use full-on technology, this does not take into consideration the importance of all food systems. What is important to discuss at this point and time in history is the need to revisit the conservation and protection of diversification particularly in seeds, the building of soil, and regeneration of agriculture.

Standing in a field of GM canola in Western Australia, we were discussing genetically modified versus non-GM crop production. On this farm, the high salinity of the soil was addressed using saltbush in a natural rotation. The restriction in production was offset with a GM canola variety that yielded more. The combination of natural and technical practices allowed the farmer to thrive.

Down the road, a young farmer was rearing fungus to incorporate into soil and interact with bacteria. It was a long-term project to understand the relationship between soil function and microbial diversity, and he was willing to suffer a few years of lower production for the sake of the soil. In time, he may be ahead of the game in terms of production.

• More with Brenda Schoepp: Give yourself the gifts that make life so much better

In Southern Australia, I stood in a field of non-GMO canola used in a rotation for production of alfalfa (called lucerne there). The natural untreated crop was integral to production because the compressed legume was exported to Japan, a country which does not tolerate a long list of applications in its imported products.

The Netherlands prohibits the planting of engineered seed and products must be labelled, including animal products. From recent public and farmer demand, the GM soybean is being replaced by use of non-GM protein sources such as quinoa.

Travelling through the English countryside non-GM crops are evidently flourishing. One of the strong reasons for opposition to GM crop is the effect on wildlife, including bees. Animal feed containing GM grain or legume may be sent to the U.K. Despite some ongoing trials, the chance of GM crops in the English countryside is not on the radar, even post-Brexit.

One stop was at an English eco-farm of organic and permaculture design focused on the social aspect of farming. The output of the farm was just a part of the main revenue stream as this was a place for people to come and work or heal. It was home to a variety of plants, animals, and insects; and welcomed the elderly, the infirm, the challenged, and the overwhelmed. You may argue that the reduced output was proof that one needs high-cost inputs and technology to farm. But that was not the purpose of this farm. Social farming is a growing trend in Europe. Taking a positional approach to the eco-farm is to say that there is not a societal need or place for agriculture.

Agriculture is a part of nature and is indeed part of society — be that in the products of the farm or in the space it provides, the sequestering of carbon, and the cleaning of air or the building of soil.

Standing in a banana plantation talking to farmers and exporters, I observed organic trees that used hot peppers at the base to ward off pests, and that produced 24 kilograms of bananas and two crops, pepper and banana. The other cultivars produced one crop of 10 to 18 kilograms of bananas.

The difference in the non-organic or treated crop was in the flesh and the skin. The commercial banana that was also sprayed had a thick skin that did not bruise during transport making it eye appealing on the outside and it had few seeds, making it eye appealing on the inside. Despite this hybrid variety being less productive, it was more favourable for export and consumer demand for perfection, putting pressure on farmers to increase inputs to produce fewer thick-skinned bananas.

There are more than 570 million farmers in the world and 90 per cent of them work on family farms. As countries and regions strive for food security, and even food sovereignty, the building up of soil will also play an important role in the overall picture.

Bringing it home, I think of Newfoundland, which has recently opened Crown land for agricultural production. The original farmed soil in the province was created from cod waste. A GM seed, or the use of chemical or fertilizer will not create this much-needed base. This is nature’s gentle reminder that food security starts from the ground up.

I have come to appreciate the complexity of every farmer’s story. Arguing against GM, conventional, or organic farming is moot. We must always allow farmers and societies both the opportunity of education and the choice of how they want to farm so they can best invest, divest, or initiate change on their farms.

The post Farming is not a one-size-fits-all business appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“It really depends on what you’re trying to achieve,” said Rene Van Acker, a professor of plant science at the University of Guelph. “If it’s a threshold of zero, that’s difficult, if not impossible.”

Van Acker co-authored two of the four papers reviewed by a group of forage specialists, seed producers, and alfalfa growers who created the voluntary coexistence guidelines for the Canadian Seed Trade Association.

Although GM alfalfa isn’t currently being grown in Western Canada, the release of the plan has raised fears it will pave the way for commercial production of the controversial crop. A similar plan was created for Eastern Canada in 2013 and in March, Forage Genetics International announced it would sell limited amounts of HarvXtra alfalfa, a glyphosate-tolerant variety, this spring.

A number of groups — including Forage Seed Canada, Peace Region Forage Seed Association, and Organic Alberta — say contamination of conventional and organic forage seed and hay would cost them lucrative markets that have a zero-tolerance policy for GM traits.

“Zero is a very low number,” said Van Acker. “There’s always the possibility for something very rare, and it would be very rare.

“I’m not sure that the threshold should be zero. If there was a threshold of .01 per cent, then they should have something to work with. With reasonable practices and awareness and neighbours talking to each other, things are possible. It is possible to maintain decent segregation at a reasonable threshold level.”

Since the GM variety has been registered for commercial sale and production by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, there is no legal recourse if the GM trait spreads to conventional or organic alfalfa.

“There’s no compensation if you are contaminated, and no one can enforce the best management practices because it’s not required by law,” said Van Acker.

In Europe, there is coexistence legislation, with legal regulations and search and seizure rights. Nothing like that exists in North America.

In April, 15 farm organizations asked the federal agriculture minister to ban the sale of GM alfalfa until a full economic impact assessment is conducted. The Alberta Association Of Municipal Districts has made a similar call to the province, but neither government has responded to the requests.

At this point, the best option may be for concerned growers in a region to work together to reduce the threat by employing best practices, especially separation distances, said Van Acker.

People should also recognize that any transfer of the Roundup Ready trait to feral alfalfa is a different situation from what happens when weeds become resistant to glyphosate, he said. In the latter, weeds with the trait are “selected” because glyphosate is constantly being used.

“There’s a piece of good news,” said Van Acker. “If it’s a Roundup Ready trait, that trait is a neutral trait and it is not selected for in the environment unless you spray Roundup. If it escapes into an environment where Roundup isn’t sprayed on the population, then the frequency of the trait in the population remains at the invasion level — very, very low.”

If genetically modified alfalfa contaminates conventional or organic at a low level — such as one in 10,000 plants — it should remain at that level in the population.

However, getting rid of even a low level of contamination is virtually impossible. And while the best management practices in the coexistence plan are good guidelines, they also come with challenges, said Van Acker.

“Best management practices include things like managing roadsides (by mowing or spraying with another herbicide). Whose jurisdiction is that? And how diligent are you going to be or do you have to be?”

In order to implement an effective coexistence plan, producers growing GM alfalfa need to be diligent and also talk with growers who may be affected, he said.

It’s also important to watch what happens with thresholds in GM-sensitive markets.

“Even in Europe, there’s a threshold for final products for the labelling of GM, but that still hasn’t been parsed out for how clean the seed has to be, for example,” said Van Acker. “If the final product in the grocery store is .09 (per cent), how clean does the seed need to be? That still makes things difficult. That’s where many people — exporters in particular — are thinking, watching and worrying.”

The coexistence plan can be found at cdnseed.org.

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“That’s one of the things in the modern breeders’ tool kit that needs improvement — our message out to the public and how it’s going to come across,” said geneticist Sean Myles of Dalhousie University. “We’re not good at it right now.”

Scientists have faced an uphill struggle in sharing facts about genetically modified organisms with consumers, partly because of how they were created in those early days, Myles said in a presentation at FarmTech last month.

Traditionally, GMOs were created by putting “a little cassette of DNA” into bacteria and then putting those bacteria into the plant.

“You make a plant with this huge piece of bacterial DNA with all sorts of little pieces in it, and it inserts that into hundreds of thousands of places within the plant genome,” said Myles.

“You don’t really know where it goes, but hey, if the plant grows up and has the trait you’re interested in, bingo — we win. We’ve got ourselves a GMO that works.”

But through that process, geneticists were “significantly altering” the plant’s genome — and consumers didn’t like that. Amid protests over ‘frankenfoods,’ almost 40 countries around the world have banned GMOs, even potentially life-saving ones.

Golden rice is the perfect example of that, he said.

“We know that there are issues in the world like vitamin A deficiency — it results in one million to two million deaths a year,” said Myles. “It’s a very serious problem, mainly in very poor countries where rice is a staple.

“Since 2000, we’ve actually had a GM rice, called golden rice, that has been available. But because of regulatory hurdles, it has never really been introduced.

“People still suffer from vitamin A deficiency because they can’t get a hold of golden rice.”

Consumers think that GM crops are made by “big companies” that just want to make a buck — but that’s not the case with golden rice.

“This was developed in an academic lab in Freiburg, Germany, through a grant to develop a solution to vitamin A deficiency in the Third World.

“It’s freely available. There’s no IP (intellectual property rights) associated with this. It’s ready to go. And it can’t move because of regulatory hurdles.”

Tell a story

But the game is changing dramatically, he said. New technologies allow geneticists to edit the genome — or what breeders like to call “precision breeding.”

“The precision with which we can alter the DNA sequence of a plant and animal is orders of magnitude better than it previously was,” said Myles. “It’s not even the same concept. It’s not the same game at all.”

“There’s no off-target modifications to the genome. We can make single changes to the DNA sequence.”

Even so, “genetics is still a really bad word for some people.”

“The fact is they’re not listening to the details. They don’t want facts,” said Myles.

“You’ve got to be able to tell a story. You’ve got to be able to touch people’s hearts. You need to tell them something that’s going to connect them emotionally with what you’re talking about.”

And scientists are notoriously terrible at that, said Myles, who described the typical attitude as: ‘I’m confident that everyone can make up their minds for themselves because every human is extraordinarily rational just like me. And if I give them the information, they’re going to decide right.’

“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You need to touch their hearts. And when you get that message across, it’s much more effective than saying, ‘Listen, trust me.’”

But the agriculture industry needs to strike a balance between facts and emotion, he said.

“You can’t just leave all the facts out,” said Myles.

“We need to describe that process and make it feel good to them. They need to feel good about that in order for us to make progress.”

And that’s the biggest challenge facing plant breeders right now, said Myles.

“No matter how many of these technological advances that we come up with, we’ll never achieve the goal without connecting with the public and the emotion of the consumer.”

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