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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1452767
This article is part of the Research Topic Engineering Future Crops Through Genome Editing View all 6 articles

Worldwide Study on Field Trials of Biotechnological Crops: New Promises but Old Policy Hurdles

Provisionally accepted
Agnès Ricroch Agnès Ricroch 1Louie-David Desachy Louie-David Desachy 1Mateo Penfornis Mateo Penfornis 1Meleksen Akin Meleksen Akin 2Ankica Kondic-Spika Ankica Kondic-Spika 3Marcel Kuntz Marcel Kuntz 4Dragana Miladinović Dragana Miladinović 3*
  • 1 Université Paris-Saclay, Saint Aubin, France
  • 2 Iğdır Üniversitesi, Iğdır, Türkiye
  • 3 Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, Serbia
  • 4 Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint Martin d'Hères, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Field trials (FTs) are a necessary step towards future commercialization of biotech crops and products thereof, whether for research and development or cultivation approval. A total of 187 FTs in 30 countries have been compiled for 2022 and 2023 using a survey and intergovernmental databases. FTs have been classified according to methods, crops and traits. Compiled FTs are mostly conducted by the public sector on eight plant species with improved stress resistance, industrial application, yield, and quality. Regarding genome editing (GenEd), 23 FTs (12% of total) are carried out in 6 countries, on 10 crops. Regulations were examined in 141 countries to discuss why in some countries FTs are not performed, although basic biotech research is carried out. The EU particularly is compared to the rest of the world. Regarding the new proposal in the EU for GenEd product classification, it was found that all recent FTs of such products fall in the category that the EU would consider as ‘equivalent to conventional plants’ (NGT-1). We also studied current cultivation approvals to highlight differences with crops tested in the field and those may be approved in the future.

    Keywords: transgenesis, CRISPR, Genome editing, plant breeding, field trials, biotechnology regulatory policy

    Received: 21 Jun 2024; Accepted: 11 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ricroch, Desachy, Penfornis, Akin, Kondic-Spika, Kuntz and Miladinović. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Dragana Miladinović, Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.