Soaring temperatures need new genomic techniques to combat agriculture’s rising challenges

This article is part of our special report Next-generation farming, sowing the seeds of data-driven agritech success.

As most of Europe headed to their favourite holiday destinations or grumbled about the unbearable heat, European agriculture grappled with the challenges of record-breaking temperatures and prolonged droughts, impacting critical food-producing regions.

In Spain, for example, the Valencian Community is expected to produce its lowest wine grape harvest for 30 years due to the ongoing drought. Most of Greece's rural areas face water rationing, which has affected several crop yields, including peach, nectarine, apricot, and plum trees in northern Greece.

Grape harvests in different regions of Italy were brought forward due to extreme weather conditions: in Sicily, because of drought and in Tuscany and Lombardy, because of torrential rains and subsequent flooding. Switzerland suffered historic losses in its wheat and potato harvests due to the constant rain over the summer months.

These reports are frequently accompanied by a debate about sustainable agricultural practices and the use of biotechnology, including New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), to mitigate the impact of climate change on our food supply.

Although these technologies heralded a new era of crop production, their widespread adoption faces numerous challenges due to environmental concerns, human health, and ethical issues.

A brief history of improving our crops

Selective breeding techniques to prioritise growing crops with desirable traits, such as resistance to disease, have been around for centuries. Early farmers developed crossbreeding methods to grow corn with various colours, sizes, and uses. Today’s strawberries are a cross between a strawberry species native to North America and one native to South America.

Nevertheless, changing plants and animals through traditional breeding can take time, and making precise changes remains difficult. In the 1970s, scientists developed genetic engineering and discovered that they could make similar changes more precisely and in a shorter amount of time.

A ‘genetically modified organism’ (GMO) may be a plant, an animal, or a microorganism whose genetic makeup has been modified using biotechnology, typically by transplanting genes from one species and inserting them into another to create desirable traits.

Some of the most common characteristics scientists incorporate in genetically modified crops are tolerance to weed-killing herbicides and resistance to insects and viruses.

The first genetically modified (GM) plant was produced in 1983 using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant. In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Flavr Savr tomato (Calgene, USA) as the first genetically modified crop for human consumption.

The New York Times described the tomato as being “genetically altered to ripen longer on the vine while remaining firm for picking and shipping”.

Gene Editing

More recently, scientists have developed different ways to alter DNA. New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) or ‘gene editing’ are used to edit an organism's existing genes in a highly targeted manner without inserting any foreign genetic material.

One prevailing method is the “gene scissors”, known as CRISPR/Cas9, introduced in 2012.

This method allows for precise editing of DNA on the level of single bases (individual units or ‘letters’ of the genetic code). The scientists behind this discovery were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2020.

Experts broadly describe the method as using a “pair of scissors to simply snip a gene out and move it somewhere else” within the same plant. This prevents the need to mix DNA from other species, which is how GMOs are created.

According to the Global Gene Editing Regulation Tracker, several approved gene-edited crops are available worldwide.

The United States, for example, sells non-browning lettuce and a milder, less bitter mustard green developed using CRISPR. In 2021, Japan approved the sale of a type of tomato edited using CRISPR to contain more GABA, a compound in tomato fruits known to lower blood pressure.

The technology could also be used to remove a gene that makes a plant incapable of dealing with extreme weather conditions, such as a drought.

The EU’s changing regulatory framework

In the European Union, plants and animals cannot currently be produced using NGTs because they are regulated under strict legislation for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), known as the 2001 GMO Directive.

The 2001 law was formulated to restrict seeds of crops created using genes from another species (e.g., transgenic crops). Almost all the GMOs authorised for sale in the EU are imported from the United States and South America and used to feed farm animals; limited amounts of imported food contain them.

With the discovery of CRISPR to edit plants and the subsequent research boom in gene editing, scientists and agribusinesses across Europe pushed for revisions in the 2001 GMO rules.

Nevertheless, in 2018, following France's request to determine how to regulate NGTs, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that they fall under the 2001 GMO Directive.

The ECJ ruled that even if gene editing applications do not result in the introduction of “foreign” genes, they should still be strictly regulated.

Scientists, individual Member States, and agriculture ministers widely criticised this decision. In 2019, the Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society argued in a discussion paper that gene-edited crops should not be regulated as GMOs if the changes are indistinguishable from natural mutations.

In July 2023, the European Commission proposed a new regulation on plants produced by specific new genomic techniques. If approved, the EU would create two categories of plants that have been altered by new genomic techniques.

One category of plants would be considered comparable to conventional plants and would not require GMO labelling. Plants made using these newer gene editing techniques but with more than 20 modifications obtained through NGTs, would require stricter assessment and mandatory labelling, similar to how GMOs are currently regulated in the EU.

In February 2024, the European Parliament adopted its position on the Commission’s proposal. MEPs supported the new rules and agreed that NGT plants comparable to naturally occurring varieties should be exempted from the strict requirements of GMO legislation.

However, MEPs want to ensure transparency by continuing mandatory labelling for all NGT plants. Moreover, to ensure that farmers remain independent of big seed companies, MEPs also want to ban all patents for NGT plants.

The concerns with new genomic techniques

But not everyone’s convinced. Although supporters of GMOs argue that they can boost crop yields and help feed the expanding global population, others point to human, ethical and environmental concerns.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) lists triggering allergens, raising antibiotic resistance, and spreading genetically modified plants into land that grows conventional crops as some of its concerns. From an environmental point of view, the genetically modified crop spillover could reduce crop diversity and lead to plant monocultures, which can degrade soils and reduce biodiversity.

Moreover, genetically modified crops can negatively impact non-target organisms such as predators and pollinators. For instance, the spread of genetically manipulated herbicide-tolerant corn and soybeans has damaged the habitat and population of the monarch butterfly in North America.

Other concerns about GMOs and gene-edited crops focus on how they are regulated; patenting is one of these concerns.

Green lawmakers, environmental advocacy groups, and organic and small farmers say that the Commission’s new rules will further tighten the grip of the handful of multinationals, allowing them to claim patents on crops that could have been obtained through conventional breeding methods while threatening non-GM and organic production.

They also argue that questions remain about their safety because NGTs have only been around for just over a decade.

Global seed market

A few companies generally dominate the global seed market, and patenting can pose problems for small-scale farmers and seed developers, as similarities with patented crops can lead to infringement claims.

While not a panacea for addressing agriculture’s many challenges, genome-editing technologies are now widely accessible and, with the right legislative framework, safeguards and investment, could help democratise the benefits of this science.

This is why MEPs want a total ban on patents for all NGT plants, plant material, parts thereof, genetic information and process features they contain to avoid legal uncertainties, increased costs and new dependencies for farmers and breeders.

They also requested a report by June 2025 on the impact of patents on breeders' and farmers' access to varied plant reproductive material and a legislative proposal to update EU rules on intellectual property rights accordingly.

Following the European Parliament’s vote in February this year, rapporteur Jessica Polfjärd (EPP, SE) said: “NGTs are crucial to strengthening Europe's food security and to green our agricultural production. The new rules will allow the development of improved plant varieties that can ensure higher yields, be climate resistant, or require fewer fertilisers and pesticides.”

Polfjärd added: “I hope member states will soon adopt their position so we can adopt the new rules before the European elections and give the farmers the tools they need for the green transition."

[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv's Advocacy Lab ]