Abstract

Reconciling sustainability with agricultural productivity in the face of climate change relies strongly on the development of resilient, high-yielding crops of superior nutritional value that can be grown more resource efficiently. Therefore, innovation in plant breeding has gained unprecedented importance. Plant breeding depends upon genetic variability within crops and their relatives as a basis for developing new plant varieties with improved characteristics. Plant breeders are continuously integrating the latest methods in plant biology and genetics into their breeding toolbox to more efficiently use existing diversity but also to induce new genetic variation. Over the past years, ever more precise and efficient plant breeding methods have been developed. This plant breeding innovation leap is based on an in-depth understanding of plant genomes and refinement of breeding methods, enabling more efficient, more precise and faster progress in achieving the desired breeding goals. Consequently, these plant breeding innovations are rapidly being developed and utilized internationally and across the seed sector, public and private research, plant species and markets. The results of a survey among 62 private plant breeding companies conducted by Euroseeds and presented in this publication confirm the enormous interest of companies in using new breeding techniques (NBTs) for a wide range of crop species and traits and the negative impact of the current regulatory situation in the EU on companies’ decisions for investments in NBT-related R&D activities for the EU market and beyond.

Highlights

  • Europe’s seed sector, technology developers and public researchers are global leaders in developing improved plant breeding methods (Lusser et al, 2011)

  • The results presented in this publication represent more than 90% replies (33 completed questionnaires) from Euroseeds direct company members involved in Research and Development (R&D) and breeding, as well as replies (29 completed questionnaires) from company members from national seed associations across Europe

  • 2 https://www.euroseeds.eu/app/uploads/2019/07/18.1010-Euroseeds-PBIPosition-1.pdf 1) there is no novel combination of genetic material, i.e., there is no stable insertion in the plant genome of one or more genes that are part of a designed genetic construct or 2) the final plant product contains solely the stable insertion of inherited genetic material from sexually compatible plant species or 3) the genetic variation is the result of spontaneous or induced mutagenesis

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Europe’s seed sector, technology developers and public researchers are global leaders in developing improved plant breeding methods (Lusser et al, 2011). With an increased understanding of plant biology and plant genes, plant breeders have constantly improved their breeding tools to include a wide variety of breeding. Depending on the challenges plant breeders must tackle, they must be able to choose the tools that enable them to reach their breeding goals in the most efficient and specific way. NBTs (as defined in Lusser et al, 2011 including genome editing and targeted mutagenesis) have raised high interest worldwide among scientists and breeders as new tools to increase breeding efficiency especially with emergence of the CRISPR technology in 2012 (Zhang et al, 2020)

Methods
Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call