Editorial: Advancing Science in Support of Sustainable Bio-innovation: 16 th ISBR Symposium

Karen Hokanson ^1* Detlef Bartsch ² Monica Garcia-Alonso ³ Aparna Islam ⁴ Andrew F Roberts ¹ Joerg Romeis ⁵

• ¹ Agriculture and Food Systems Institute, Washington, United States
• ² Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), Braunschweig, Berlin, Germany
• ³ Estel Consult Ltd, Berkshire, United Kingdom
• ⁴ BRAC University, Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh
• ⁵ Agroscope (Switzerland), Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

The ISBR Symposium is an international meeting organized biennially by the International Society for 1 Biosafety Research (ISBR) since 1990 at various locations throughout the world (www.isbr.info). Aim 2 of the symposia is to provide a unique opportunity for public and private sector research scientists, 3 regulators, technology developers, non-government organizations and others to share their 4 experience and expertise and to discuss biosafety related to the sustainable application of 5 biotechnology. As with past symposia, ISBR hosted a research topic in Frontiers in Bioengineering and 6Biotechnology: section Biosafety and Biosecurity, open to the presenters at the most recent 16th 7 ISBR Symposium held in May 2023 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA (Figure 1). 8Around the central theme of 'Advancing Science in Support of Sustainable Bio-innovation', the 16th 9ISBR Symposium program included a series of presentations in four topical plenary sessions: 1) 10Ensuring social license for bio-innovation; 2) Risk analysis for persistent engineered genetic traits; 3) 11Fit-for-purpose governance frameworks for sustainable bio-innovation; and 4) Sustainable 12 biotechnologies for a changing world. In addition to these plenary sessions, the symposium included 13 over 20 organized sessions and workshops offered in parallel on a range of topics, and numerous 14Pecha Kucha and traditional poster presentations. Out of the diverse presentations, the society has 15 assembled a collection of 17 peer-reviewed publications representative of the different topics 16presented and discussed at the ISBR symposium. 17 recurring theme for the ISBR about using the growing years of experience with regulation of GM 23 crops to make the regulatory process and decision-making more efficient and effective.