Abstract
Agricultural data in its multiple forms are ubiquitous. With progress in crop and input monitoring systems and price reductions over the past decade, data are now being captured at an unprecedented rate. Once compiled, organized and analyzed, these data are capable of providing valuable insights into much of the agri-food supply chain. While much of the focus is on precision farming, agricultural data applications coupled with gene editing tools hold the potential to enhance crop performance and global food security. Yet, digitization of agriculture is a double-edged sword as it comes with inherent security and privacy quandaries. Infrastructure, policies, and practices to better harness the value of data are still lacking. This article reports expert opinions about the potential challenges regarding the use of data relevant to the development and approval of new crop traits as well as mechanisms employed to manage and protect data. While data could be of great value, issues of intellectual property and accessibility surround many of its forms. The key finding of this research is that surveyed experts optimistically report that by 2030, the synergy of computing power and genome editing could have profound effects on the global agri-food system, but that the European Union may not participate fully in this transformation.
Highlights
Agriculture has steadily adopted a plethora of technological innovations, which are needed more than ever if global food security issues are to be adequately addressed
A new breeding technology increasingly being used, gene editing—spearheaded by clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/ Cas)—is optimistically expected by the research community to enhance global agricultural productivity (Zhu et al 2020; Lassoued et al 2018a; Kim and Kim 2019)
Among the wide variety of data collected in modern plant breeding processes, we identify and define the following as the most significant:
Summary
Agriculture has steadily adopted a plethora of technological innovations, which are needed more than ever if global food security issues are to be adequately addressed. A new breeding technology increasingly being used, gene editing—spearheaded by clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/ Cas)—is optimistically expected by the research community to enhance global agricultural productivity (Zhu et al 2020; Lassoued et al 2018a; Kim and Kim 2019). The main challenge facing modern plant breeding programs is how to integrate these large volumes of genomic, phenotypic and environmental data to inform variety development decisions (Kuriakose et al 2020; Zhao et al 2019). The increased complexity and volume of breeding data make sophisticated analytical tools, new storage systems, and data management facilities for information integration a vital requirement in the agriculture industry (Heckenberger et al 2008; Kuriakose et al 2020)
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