“The UK government is close to approving rules for precision-bred plants in England. In May, Parliament published draft legislation that will enable a new regulatory system, as set out in the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023.

Precision breeding involves introducing genetic changes into the DNA of plants or animals using techniques such as gene editing. The new regulatory framework aims to introduce gene-edited plants with characteristics such as reduced need for pesticides and fertilizers, lower emissions, and reduced costs for farmers. Because the genetic changes are limited to what may have been obtained through traditional breeding, precision-bred crops pose no greater risk to health or the environment than traditionally bred crops. As such, the new regulatory framework will be distinct from that governing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which involve inserting foreign DNA into the genome.

If the draft is approved by both houses of Parliament, the rules will allow the commercial use of gene editing. It will enable plant scientists and breeders to develop varieties of crops with traits that confer resilience to climate change, disease resistance, or enhanced nutrition. Those crops might include oilseed crops enriched in ω-3 oils, non-browning potatoes to reduce food waste, tomatoes enriched with vitamin D3, and strawberry plants with five times the yield.”

From Nature.

“The FDA has issued its first ever approval on a safety consultation for lab-grown fish. That makes Wildtype only the fourth company to get approval from the regulator to sell cell-cultivated animal products..

Wildtype salmon is now on the menu at Haitian restaurant Kann in Portland, Oregon, and the company has opened a waitlist for the next five restaurants to stock the fish. It joins Upside Foods and Good Meat, two companies with permission to sell cultivated chicken in the US, while Mission Barns has been cleared by the FDA but is awaiting USDA approval for its cultivated pork fat.”

From The Verge.

“Everybody knows that drought is bad for growing things, but it wasn’t until last year that I learned heavy rain following drought is also bad, at least for tomatoes. The dry weather causes their skin to lose elasticity, and the sudden increase in moisture causes them to swell and burst. The fruit is still edible if you pick it fast enough, but a tomato becomes bug bait as soon as its insides are exposed. Crops don’t wait, and they often don’t keep.

This is one of the many lessons we’ve learned since leaving our concrete stamp in Philadelphia for three green acres in North Carolina in 2022. My wife and I initially relocated to be closer to family and because we wanted a yard where our kids could play. But as we acclimated to the greenery of the Piedmont, our appetites grew. We wanted more than a yard; we craved the full pastoral.

And so we bought a property with a large perennial pollinator garden, fruit trees, numerous trellises, a lengthy blueberry hedge, nine large raised beds and the pièce de résistance: a Lord & Burnham greenhouse built over the top of the walkout basement. We saw the house for the first time on a Wednesday. By Sunday, we were under contract and fantasizing about a homestead, where we would strive for self-sufficiency: growing and raising most of what we eat.

But three years later, most of the produce and all of the animal protein our family of five eats comes from Costco, Walmart or our local farmers market. Homesteading was simply not for us — though it did reinforce for me the miracle of modern agriculture.”

From Washington Post.

“A team of scientists in China recently announced that they had identified a gene that, when overheated, appears to have a negative impact on crops, lowering yield and producing chalky-looking, pasty-tasting grains. But when that gene is deactivated — through gene editing or through breeding that capitalizes on a naturally occurring variant that doesn’t react to higher temperatures — rice plants produce more and better grains, according to a peer-reviewed paper published last month in the journal Cell.”

From Washington Post.