Digital Illustration by Vikash Khatri
Gene-edited crops powered by CRISPR to address our food security problems
Maanal Gauri, Nainika Gupta, Nandan Mandal, Navjot Kaur, Samhitha Samishetty, Shivank Joshi, and Suhani Shrivastava
Did you know that we can now engineer the food we eat? Thanks to a revolutionary technology called CRISPR: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. To put in simple words, CRISPR is a way to add, remove, or alter specific stretches of a cell’s genetic machinery, adaptable in both plants and animals. Discovered in the 1980s as a pattern of repeating sequences in bacteria, it was in the late 2000s that scientists discovered the role of these repeating patterns in adaptive immunity for bacteria. This “Nature’s Machine” was mimicked and successfully adopted for genetic engineering (GE) in 2012 and there has been no looking back ever since. The disruptive strength of this game-changing technology was reinforced when the duo of women inventors Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry for the year 2020. CRISPR-based solutions have found immense applications in addressing the grand challenges related to human health and food security staring at our faces today. Let us dive deeper into the landscape of genetically engineered crops aka CRISPR crops to understand their potential, related research, current public perception and related regulatory aspects.
Over the years, the field of agriculture has witnessed many technological interventions to maximize crop productivity and quality. Traditional practices included crossbreeding, and use of organic manures and pest repellants. The Indian Green Revolution in 1960s introduced radical transformations comprising of more advanced mechanical technologies and agrochemicals. But the intended benefits were rather quickly outplayed by the subsequent damage caused by the use (and then overuse) of fertilizers and pesticides. CRISPR is a rising technology with the potential to not only control the damage caused by some aspects of the Green Revolution but also to sustainably address the challenge of global food security. CRISPR-based GE is being employed to introduce desirable traits like pest resistance, climate change resistance, and yield improvement in crops like wheat, rice, maize, tomatoes, potatoes etc. Overall, CRISPR has undeniably demonstrated potential to advance progress in the agricultural sector.
While preliminary research on CRISPR crops has proven to be powerful, substantial amount of investigation is required to establish the reliability of the technique. Long-term impact of editing plant genomes needs to be evaluated to identify possible side-effects occurring in the future. Many researchers and sections of the general masses have raised genuine concerns over the health impact due to the consumption of gene-edited crops, perceiving them as unnatural products. Consumers tend to look for something more ‘natural’ when it comes to food and have been rejecting the idea of CRISPR crops because of their ethical values. CRISPR researchers draw analogies from conventional breeding practiced by farmers over decades to explain the mechanism of gene-editing, which brings about the same changes, but at a significantly faster pace.
Another challenge forthe CRISPR research community has been to clarify the confusion around the classification ofCRISPR crops. CRISPR cropsare being perceivedas genetically modified organisms (GMOs). However, the mechanisms used for making GMOs are significantly different from CRISPR-based genome editing. Therefore, unlike GMOs, the final CRISPR crop product does not carry any additional foreign components in it.
Robust communication channels between researchers and general public regarding the risks and benefits of such crops are significantly lacking. Currently, a predominantly negative public opinion on the subject has been a major roadblock in its commercialization. A more unbiased and objective narrative surrounding CRISPR crops needs to be developed; a research direction being actively pursued by researchers at Plaksha University.
As CRISPR technology is quite recent, the regulatory framework around it is also in the nascent phase. While science and technology are global, they are always subject to regional politics and religious values. Due to the broad spectrum of debates surrounding CRISPR crops, diverse regulatory framework exists in different countries for their use.In the European Union, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared in 2018 that regulations for all genetically edited organisms fall under the same category as forGMOs and therefore must comply with the EU GMO Directive. US on the other hand has lesser regulations on the use of gene-edited crops. US regulatory bodies like FDA, USDA, and EPA regulate genetically engineered crops and food. In 2020, a legislation was passed by the USDA that established an exemption for plants modified by GE in cases where the modification could otherwise have been made through conventional breeding. China recently announced new policies regarding genetically edited crops whereby the crops posing no safety repercussions can be commercialized after their testing in labs and small-scale field trials. The Indian scenario witnessed a huge change on 30th March 2022 when the government announced that CRISPR crops will be excluded from the GMO classification. This might pave the way for many Indian CRISPR crop variants to emerge in due course of time.
The extent of research on CRISPR crops in a country is also largely dependent on respective national regulations. For example, since the approval of new policies for GE crops in China, scientists are now actively working to take theory to the fields. In contrast, researchers in Europe don’t get the opportunity to conduct large-scale field trials.
What we've just attempted to demonstrate is that there is a technology which has the potential to change the course of the future. CRISPR-based technologies can benefit the society in many ways likesupporting development of new drugs for a variety of diseases, eliminating rare genetic problems, and supporting development of more robustplant variants. But the concerns raised by critics of the technology too have been well-founded, particularly regarding the risks to human health.
The question is—do we really understand the complete picture? Unfortunately, not yet. It is absolutely crucial to start a dialogue on this front in India to evaluate and understand the various risks of using CRISPR technology. Public opinion needs to be sincerely considered for policy making, because they are significant stakeholders and the eventual consumers of products based on this technology. So, the next time you think of grocery shopping, indulge in some reading about CRISPR crops, their promising potential, and the possible impacts when they are served on your plates.
