Guidelines for non-transgenic gene edited plants pending with GEAC from January 2020
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute may have been one of the bodies investigating allegations that unauthorized genetically modified (GM) rice was exported to Europe, but the institute itself has taken its rice research beyond such GM technology. It is carried forward by using genes from other organisms. Instead, IARI is in the process of developing flexible and high-yielding rice varieties using gene editing techniques, which won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and which are already being approved for export to several countries. Already happened.
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IARI expects such varieties to be in the hands of Indian farmers by 2024. However, a proposal for Indian regulators to equate this technology with conventional breeding methods, as it does not involve the introduction of foreign DNA, is pending. Genetic Engineering Evaluation Committee for almost two years.
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IARI has previously worked on Golden Rice, a traditional GM variety that inserted genes from other organisms into the rice plant, but the trial ended five years ago due to agronomic issues, director AK Singh said. India has not approved any GM food crop for commercial cultivation.
Precision and Efficiency
The institute has now moved towards newer techniques such as Site Directed Nuclease (SDN) 1 and 2, which aim to bring accuracy and efficiency to the breeding process by using gene editing tools to directly alter the genomic code.
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“In this case, you’re just changing a gene that’s already present in the plant, without bringing out any genes. When the protein comes from an outside organism, you need to test for safety. But In this case, this protein is right there in the plant, and little is being changed, like nature does through mutation,” he said. “But it is much faster and far more accurate than natural mutagenesis or traditional breeding methods that involve trial and error and multiple breeding cycles. This is potentially a new green revolution.”
A research alliance under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which also includes IARI, is in the process of developing rice varieties that are drought-tolerant, salinity-tolerant and high yielding using these techniques. Dr. Singh said that they could potentially be ready for commercial cultivation within three years.
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However, the draft guidelines for such gene-edited plants have been stuck with GEAC for almost two years. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, a group of senior scientists calling themselves the India Agriculture Advancement Group (IAAG) had expressed concern over the “excessive delay”.
The guidelines were submitted to GEAC in January 2020 after an extended public consultation and expert review process under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology and approval from its review committee on genetic manipulation, a senior official said.
open field trial
“The SDN1 and SDN2 categories of genome-edited plants do not contain any foreign DNA,” the IAAG letter said. Signatories include the former head of ICAR, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Institute of Science.
Dr. Singh said, “US, Canada, Australia and Japan are among the countries which have already approved SDN 1 and 2 technologies similar to GM, so such varieties of rice can be exported without any problem. could.” The European Food Safety Authority has also submitted its opinion that these technologies do not require the same safety assessment as conventional GM plants, although the EU has not yet accepted the recommendation, they said.
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