MeliBio’s ‘bee-free’ honey to hit the European market

MeliBio, a startup developing honey without bees, rolls out its first plant-based sweetener products to the European market in partnership with Slovenian food maker Narayan.

https://www.ingredientsnetwork.com/melibio-s-bee-free-honey-to-hit-the-european-news124113.html

Meetings – Conferences / Veranstaltungen - Konferenzen

Grüne Gentechnik - klimafreundlich, nachhaltig, zukunftsfähig?

29. April 2024, 18:30 - Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien

https://www.dieangewandte.at/aktuell/aktuell_detail?artikel_id=1713235337950

Press Releases -Media / Presse- und Medienberichte

BDL: Zeitvorsprung nicht verspielen

https://www.landjugend.de/presse/2024/zeitvorsprung-nicht-verspielen

AFBV calls on MEPs to vote on April 24 in favor of the regulation on New Genomic Techniques (NGT).

https://www.biotechnologies-vegetales.com/commentaires-sur-les-amendements-au-projet-ngt-de-la-commission/

WGG: Opening the way for new genomic techniques in Europe

https://www.wggev.de/appeal-to-parliamentarians-to-open-the-way-for-ngt-plants-in-europe/

ECVC: Open letter: ECVC calls on MEPs to protect farmers' rights on seeds by rejecting the proposal on NGTs, and

supporting necessary changes to the proposal on PRM

https://www.eurovia.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PRM-and-NGT-votes-European-Parliament-plenary-April-2024-EN-.pdf

Cell Press: Making crops colorful for easier weeding by robots

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-crops-easier-weeding-robots.html

Karberg S.: Genveränderte Pflanzen in der EU: „Es braucht die modernen Methoden“

https://background.tagesspiegel.de/agrar-ernaehrung/genveraenderte-pflanzen-in-der-eu-es-braucht-die-modernen-methoden?utm_source=bgae+vorschau&utm_medium=email

Bundesamt für Umwelt: Neue gentechnische Verfahren: Kommerzialisierungspipeline im Bereich Pflanzenzüchtung und

Lizenzvereinbarungen (PDF, 3 MB, 29.01.2024) Im Auftrag des BAFU – Eva Gelinsky

https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/de/home/themen/biotechnologie/publikationen-studien/studien.html

GM Watch: Philippines: Farmers and citizens win court case against GM golden rice and Bt eggplant

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20416

Choubey J.: Philippines court's order against modified brinjal, golden rice to see global impact

https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2024/Apr/20/philippines-courts-order-against-modified-brinjal-golden-rice-to-see-global-impact

Only some selected press releases or media reports are listed here. The daily up-date of the press releases and media reports are ►here: April week 16

Publications – Publikationen

Kahrmann J. and Georg Leggewie G.: European Commission’s Plans for a Special Regulation of Plants Created by New

Genomic Techniques

This Insight explains in detail, yet easily understandable, the contents of the European Commission’s draft regulation on plants obtained by certain new genomic techniques and their food and feed. It critically comments on the underlying scientific considerations and discusses potential legal issues – the precautionary principle being one of them, though arguably not the most important one. Finally, the Insight summarizes the ongoing discussions and developments regarding the draft regulation. The Authors also hint at potential amendments, which might resolve some of the remaining problems.

https://www.europeanpapers.eu/en/europeanforum/european-commission-plans-for-special-regulation-plants-created-new-genomic-techniques

https://www.europeanpapers.eu/en/system/files/pdf_version/EP_EF_2024_I_002_Jens_Kahrmann_Georg_Leggewie_00740.pdf

Krink N., Nikel P.I., Beisel C.L. (2024): A Hitchhiker’s guide to CRISPR editing tools in bacteria: CRISPR can help unlock

the bacterial world, but technical and regulatory barriers persist. EMBO Rep. 25: 1694 – 1699 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-024-00086-w

https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44319-024-00086-w

Correia P.M.P., Najafi J., Palmgren M. (2024): De novo domestication: what about the weeds? Trends in Plant Science (2024)

DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2024.03.001.

Most high-yielding crops are susceptible to abiotic and biotic stresses, making them particularly vulnerable to the potential effects of climate change. A possible alternative is to accelerate the domestication of wild plants that are already tolerant to harsh conditions and to increase their yields by methods such as gene editing. We foresee that crops’ wild progenitors could potentially compete with the resulting de novo domesticated plants, reducing yields. To improve the recognition of weeds, we propose using gene editing techniques to introduce traits into de novo domesticated crops that will allow for visual recognition of the crops by weeding robots that have been trained by machine learning.

 www.cell.com/trends/plant-scie … 1360-1385(24)00057-8

Pathirana R. and Carim F. (2024): Plant Biotechnology—An Indispensable Tool for Crop Improvement. Plants 13 (8), 1133

https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13081133

https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/13/8/1133

Fitzpatrick, T.B., Dalvit, I., Chang, F.-H., Wang, K. et al. (2024): Vitamin B₁ enhancement in the endosperm of rice through

thiamine sequestration. Plant Biotechnol. J. | https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.14348

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pbi.14348

Novoa J., Fernandez-Dumont A., Mills E.N,C., Moreno F.J., Pazos F. (2024): Advancing the allergenicity assessment of new

proteins using a text mining resource. Food and Chemical Toxicology 187, 114638 | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2024.114638

With a society increasingly demanding alternative protein food sources, new strategies for evaluating protein safety issues, such as allergenic potential, are needed. Large-scale and systemic studies on allergenic proteins are hindered by the limited and non-harmonized clinical information available for these substances in dedicated databases. A missing key information is that representing the symptomatology of the allergens, especially given in terms of standard vocabularies, that would allow connecting with other biomedical resources to carry out different studies related to human health. In this work, we have generated the first resource with a comprehensive annotation of allergens’ symptomatology, using a text-mining approach that extracts significant co-mentions between these entities from the scientific literature (PubMed, ∼36 million abstracts). The method identifies statistically significant co-mentions between the textual descriptions of the two types of entities in the literature as indication of relationship. 1,180 clinical signs extracted from the Human Phenotype Ontology, the Medical Subject Heading terms of PubMed together with other allergen-specific symptoms, were linked to 1,036 unique allergens annotated in two main allergen-related public databases via 14,009 relationships. This novel resource, publicly available through an interactive web interface, could serve as a starting point for future manually curated compilation of allergen symptomatology.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691524002047

Pence M.G., Koch M., DeMond J. and Rudgers G. (2024): Applying knowledge and experience from potato (Solanum

tuberosum) to update genetic stability data requirements in the risk assessment for vegetatively propagated biotech crops. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. 12: 1376634 | doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1376634

Regulatory agencies require data on genetic stability as part of the safety assessment for biotech crops, even though the genetic stability of a plant is not necessarily an environmental, human or animal health safety concern. While sexual reproduction has the potential to introduce genomic variation in conventionally bred and biotech crops, vegetative propagation is genetically stable. In vegetatively propagated crops, meiosis does not occur thus limiting the number of homologous recombination events that could lead to chromosomal rearrangements in progeny plants. Genetic stability data is often, but should not be, an automatic requirement for the safety assessment of vegetatively propagated biotech crops. Genetic stability data from biotech potato events has demonstrated that vegetative propagation of potato tubers does not affect the stability of introduced DNA sequences or lead to loss of trait efficacy. The knowledge and experience gained from over 30 years of assessing the safety of biotech crops can be used by regulatory authorities to eliminate data requirements that do not address environmental, food or feed safety concerns. As a first step, regulators should consider removing requirements for genetic stability as part of the safety review for vegetatively propagated biotech crops.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2024.1376634/full

Smyth S. J., Phillips P. W. B., Castle D. (2024): An assessment of the linkages between GM crop biotechnology and climate

change mitigation. GM Crops & Food 15:1, 150-169 | DOI: 10.1080/21645698.2024.2335701

This article provides an analysis and evaluation of peer-reviewed evidence on the contribution of crop biotechnology to climate change mitigation and adaption. While there is a range of agricultural technologies and products that contribute to climate change mitigation, this literature landscape analysis focuses on the development of genetically modified traits, their use and adoption in major commodity crops and responsive changes in production techniques. Jointly, these technologies and products are contributing to climate change mitigation, yet the technology, the literature and evidence is still evolving as more sophisticated research methods are used with greater consistency. The literature analysis is undertaken with consideration of the consequential impact that regulatory regimes have on technology development. This assessment utilizes the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale and citation analysis, concluding that GM crops provide benefits that contribute to climate change mitigation.

https://doi.org/10.1080/21645698.2024.2335701

Lika E., Sutherland C., Gleim S., Smyth S.J. (2024): Quantifying changes in the environmental impact of in-crop herbicide

use in Saskatchewan, Canada. Weed Technol.38(e28), 1–8. | DOI:10.1017/wet.2024.15

The sustainable management of herbicides is critical to modern agriculture and the environment. This article examines the evolution and environmental implications of herbicide use in Saskatchewan, Canada, agriculture. It quantifies changes in herbicide use and their environmental impacts by analyzing farm-level herbicide use data from 1991 to 1994 and from 2016 to 2019 through the environmental impact quotient. Results confirm significant reductions in both environmental and toxicological impacts of herbicides used, underlining the pivotal shift from tillage-based weed control to herbicide-resistant cropping systems. The environmental impact of the top five herbicides (glufosinate, glyphosate, clethodim, imazamox, and 2,4-D) used from 2016 to 2019 is 65% lower than that for those herbicides (MCPA, 2,4-D, bromoxynil, diclofop-methyl, and trifluralin) used from 1991 to 1994, with a 45% reduction in the active ingredient applied per acre. Despite increased herbicide use due to more crop acres being seeded, the findings highlight a marked improvement in the sustainability of herbicide use, affirming the importance of technological advancements in agriculture. This research contributes valuable insights into long-term trends in herbicide use, offering a practical framework for informed decisions aligning with sustainable agricultural practices as well as reduced biodiversity impacts.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/weed-technology/article/quantifying-changes-in-the-environmental-impact-of-incrop-herbicide-use-in-saskatchewan-canada/A46EE5D27D60B150C459E5487E906E66

EFSA

EFSA: César-Razquin, A., Casacuberta, J., Dalmay, T., Federici, S., Jacchia, S., Kagkli, D. M., Moxon, S., & Papadopoulou, N. (2024):

Technical Note on the quality of DNA sequencing for the molecular characterisation of genetically modified plants. EFSA Journal 22 (4), e8744 | https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8744

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8744

CEP Panel (2024): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme leucyl aminopeptidase from the genetically modified Aspergillus oryzae

strain NZYM-BU. EFSA Journal, 22(4), e8717. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8717

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8717

CEP Panel (2024): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme oryzin from the non-genetically modified Aspergillus ochraceus strain AE-P.

EFSA Journal, 22(4), e8713. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8713

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8713

CEP Panel (2024): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme glutaminase from the genetically modified Bacillus licheniformis strain

NZYM-JQ. EFSA Journal, 22(4), e8711. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8711

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8711

CEP Panel (2024): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme phosphodiesterase I from the non-genetically modified Leptographium

procerum strain FDA. EFSA Journal, 22(4), e8724. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8724

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2024.8724

EFSA Traineeships Call 2024

https://careers.efsa.europa.eu/jobs/efsa-traineeships-call-2024-407