A newly funded European COST Action called PlantEd (Plant genome editing – a technology with transformative potential) will bring together expertise from a range of disciplines to evaluate plant genome editing techniques and their resulting products from various perspectives. The findings will serve to design a roadmap for directing and facilitating applications of genome editing in plant research and breeding, which in turn will help setting R&D priorities and stimulating further cross-national and cross-disciplinary collaborations.
The Action, which is led by Dr Dennis Eriksson at the Department of Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), gathers more than 260 experts from 36 European countries and a few beyond. The work will be organized in five different working groups: 1) Technical platforms, 2) Impact assessment, 3) Policies and regulations, 4) Perceptions and opinions, 5) Integration and communication.
A great challenge of this century is to provide adequate nutrition for an increasing global population while developing a more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable agriculture that counters climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation of arable land. Plant research and breeding are very important in meeting this challenge. Building on scientific progress, a number of genome editing techniques have been developed allowing an unprecedented level of precision in our control over genetic material and its corresponding traits.
For more questions, please contact Dennis Eriksson at dennis.eriksson@slu.se
