Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issues Safety Evaluation Guideline for Gene-Edited Agricultural Plants (Provisional)

The Department of Science, Technology and Education of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, on January 24 issued the Safety Evaluation Guideline for Gene-Edited Agricultural Plants (Provisional), which outlines the submission of applications for a safety evaluation based on possible risks, covering gene-edited plants that have not introduced the exogenous gene.

Industry professionals said that the issuance of the guideline indicates that GMOs are now moving a step closer to industrialization. The guideline is a breakthrough in China’s previous gene-editing status quo “research in the lead, administration lagging behind, application in blank.” 

China’s primary research and development of gene-edited biological breeding technology is at the forefront of the world, but industrialization is still blank. With the issuance of the new policy, Chinese gene-editing and breeding technology is on a fast track toward industrialization.

So far, CRISPR-Cas9 is the most widely used gene-editing technology, but foreign scientists own the patent for this technology. In December 2021, Academician Xu Zhihong, former president of Peking University, said that the team of Academician Zhu Jiankang has cooperated with the team of Professor Lai Jinsheng of China Agricultural University in developing two Cas12 tool enzyme series, which have independent intellectual property rights. This is a breakthrough in China’s life science development.