China’s approval of gene-edited crops energizes researchers

Good news! Western countries are way too risk averse to a point to be self defeating! On the other hand totalitarian dictatorships like the Communist Party of China are too careless and risk seeking!

Humans have what it takes to accelerate natural evolution on much shorter time scales! What takes natural evolution perhaps millions of years can be done in months or years. All we have to fear is fear itself!

"... Since China’s agriculture ministry released preliminary guidelines on 24 January, researchers have been hurrying to submit applications for the use of their gene-edited crops. These include the development of wheat varieties resistant to a fungal disease called powdery mildew, which are described in a paper in Nature this week ...
China’s new rules are more conservative than those in the United States — which does not regulate gene-edited crops that incorporate small changes similar to those that could occur naturally — but are more lenient than the tough European Union stance of treating all gene-edited crops as genetically modified (GM) organisms. ...
Currently, it can take up to six years to get biosafety approval for a GM crop in China. But researchers say the new guidelines — which lay out the process for receiving a biosafety certificate for gene-edited crops — could reduce the approval time to one to two years. ..."

From the abstract:

"... Here we describe Tamlo-R32, a mutant with a 304-kilobase pair targeted deletion in the MLO-B1 locus of wheat that retains crop growth and yields while conferring robust powdery mildew resistance. We show that this deletion results in an altered local chromatin landscape, leading to the ectopic activation of Tonoplast monosaccharide transporter 3 (TaTMT3B), and that this activation alleviates growth and yield penalties associated with MLO disruption. Notably, the function of TMT3 is conserved in other plant species such as Arabidopsis thaliana. Moreover, precision genome editing facilitates the rapid introduction of this mlo resistance allele (Tamlo-R32) into elite wheat varieties. This work demonstrates the ability to stack genetic changes to rescue growth defects caused by recessive alleles, which is critical for developing high-yielding crop varieties with robust and durable disease resistance."

China’s approval of gene-edited crops energizes researchers Scientists say newly published guidelines will spur research into crops that have increased yields and greater resilience to climate change.

Genome-edited powdery mildew resistance in wheat without growth penalties (no public access)