A new form of genetic modification may get crop traits onto the market cheaper and faster but it won’t replace traditional transgenics, said a biotechnology guru.
The emerging science enables breeders to tweak genes within plants rather than transplanting genes to create a desired trait.
The technology is so new it doesn’t have a broadly accepted generic name.
Cibus, a San Diego trait development company, has used what it refers to as “targeted mutagenesis” to create a new type of herbicide tolerant canola it plans to commercialize in North America and Europe.
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Dow AgroSciences has employed what it calls “zinc fingers” to cause desired mutations at specific DNA sequences in plants to create desired traits.
Wilf Keller, president of Ag West Bio Inc., said those two examples are the tip of the iceberg for this new type of genetic modification that doesn’t require the insertion of genes into a plant.
“I expect that in due course there will be a range of molecular scissors, if you will, that will go in there and make subtle changes to that molecule,” he said.
One of the big benefits of the emerging technology is that it appears it will be subject to less stringent regulation, at least south of the border.
Dow AgroSciences hopes it will be able to get new crop traits into farmers’ hands one or two years faster than by using traditional GM crop technology.
U.S. regulators have already deemed Cibus’s herbicide tolerant canola to be a product of mutagenesis, allowing the company to circumvent the more stringent approval process for GM crops.
That is a big advantage in terms of the time and cost it takes to bring a product to market, said Dave Voss, vice-president of commercial development with Cibus.
“If you’re deemed GM you may never get through. Look at what’s happening right now with alfalfa and sugarbeets.”
Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa and sugarbeets have been tied up in lengthy legal battles in the U.S. surrounding the approval process.
Cibus’s canola received quick regulatory approval in the U.S. but is still making its way through the Canadian approval system, which views any plant with a novel trait as something to be regulated.
“We actually are hopeful that we will soon be through that. There is a possibility that we actually might even be through it for spring planting,” said Voss.
That doesn’t mean the crop would be ready for the Canadian marketplace. It still has to go through the two-year variety registration process. Voss doesn’t anticipate commercial launch of the herbicide tolerant canola in Canada until 2014.
It will hit the U.S. market about a year earlier because there is no variety registration process in that country.
Keller said despite the obvious regulatory benefits of this new form of mutagenesis, he doesn’t expect it to replace traditional genetic modification because there is nothing as powerful as inserting a block of new genes into a plant to create beneficial new crop traits.
“It’s an additional tool in the toolbox,” he said.
But he does believe it will replace the old form of random mutagenesis where plants were blasted with chemicals or radiation in hopes of creating a mutated plant with the desired characteristics.
With precise mutagenesis technology breeders are able to tweak specific genes rather than using the “brute force” approach.
“In terms of the genome it is much more benign than conventional mutagenesis, which causes a lot of collateral damage,” said Keller.
