Gene-Edited Crops Commercially Available Soon

(GREENWOOD COLLEGE, CO) Interest, innovation, and investment in gene editing tools like CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) have heated up in recent years, and will only intensify in 2019. The technology is being described as “game-changing” and certainly has the potential to live up to the hype says Crystal Carpenter Senior Economist for Specialty Crops with CoBank. Gene editing within crops allows for economical nutritional improvements while enabling the production system to produce more with less. The low cost of gene-editing technologies offers solutions to agricultural labor and water shortages, disease and chemical resistance, climate change, food waste, food security, nutrition, and farm profitability. Gene editing opens the door for historic crop improvements in the specialty crop sector. Costly and time-intensive, traditional GMO techniques have created barriers to entry for smaller companies and small-acreage crops. An increasing number of gene-edited crops are expected to hit the market over the next several years. Jennifer Kuzma of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University estimates 20 commercialized gene-edited crops will become available in the U.S. in the next five years.