″Gene editing and GMO are part and parcel of the best technologies we have for improving crops and feeding the world.″

– Sir Richard John Roberts, British Biochemist and Molecular Biologist & Winner of 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine shared his views on the future of GM crops and the prevailing challenges in its cultivation. 

Nobel laureate Sir Richard John Roberts, a British biochemist and molecular biologist, who was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, is one among those who welcome the recently announced GM Mustard commercialisation in India. Roberts, who currently works at New England Biolabs, opines that the Centre’s decision on GM Mustard will go a long way in improving the crop yield and nutritional quality, considering that today India meets nearly 55-60 per cent of its edible oil demand through imports.

In 2016, Roberts and other Nobelists had composed and signed a ‘Laureates Letter Supporting Precision Agriculture (GMOs)’  addressed to the leaders of Greenpeace, the United Nations and global governments. Roberts has advocated for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in general and Golden Rice in particular to advance health in developing countries, noting the high safety record of GM foods. 

Based on the recommendation of the regulator Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC ), on October 25, 2022, the Ministry of Environment & Forest and Climate Change allowed the environmental release of transgenic mustard hybrid DMH-11 along with parental lines bn 3.6 and modbs 2.99 containing barnase, barstar and bar genes for developing new parental lines and hybrids. This decision has been viewed by some as a major positive for the country, while a few citizens, farmers associations, political organisations and activists have opposed it tooth and nail citing adverse impacts on the soil, environment and human/animal health. 

Roberts was in Mumbai recently to deliver a keynote address at the Academic launch of Maharashtra State Skills University. In an interaction with AgroSpecrum he shared his views on the future of GM crops and the prevailing challenges in its cultivation. Edited excerpts;

Will the GM Mustard commercialisation in India prove beneficial to farmers and the agriculture industry? 

One just needs to look at the history of Bt-cotton to see the impact of the modification in terms of improved yield and greatly decreased use of pesticides. One can expect similar improvements in other GM crops. The preliminary data for mustard appears to show significant yield improvements (almost 40 per cent). This kind of improvement will be very important for farmers.

The challenges are likely to come from anti-GMO activists, who have destroyed GM crops in other countries out of ignorance of their value or have made it very difficult to have the crops reach the market. This is an area where the government needs to play a key role in counteracting the lies that are told by the anti-GMO folks and if necessary, finding them or locking them up. The purveying of demonstrably false information is becoming a serious social disruptor and must be counteracted not just on the GMO front, but in all spheres of life.

What are your views on the current application and future perspectives of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology for developing new varieties of crops? How will CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology address the current challenges in agriculture?

It is already clear that CRISPR/Cas9 technology can be enormously helpful in developing novel genetically-modified crops – and examples abound. However, older methods also work well and the most sophisticated modern plant breeders use every tool at their disposal. The idea that one can get around the anti-GMO resistance by using CRISPR/Cas9 as a replacement is very concerning to me. The genetic modifications possible when using CRISPR/Cas9 just for editing are quite limited and should not be viewed by regulators as not being a GMO method. They clearly are and should be embraced as such. Then they can be combined with other methods to really speed the precision breeding of new crops. I find it disingenuous when scientists try to distinguish gene editing and GMO. They are both part and parcel of the very best technologies we have for improving crops and feeding the world.

How can GM crops solve global food security issues? 

Traditional breeding methods carried out over hundreds of years have led to significant improvements in yield, taste and pest resilience for the major crops we eat in the west and where the companies can make profits. Few companies have focused their attention on the crops that are widely consumed in the developing world, because companies always felt the potential profit margins were too small to make it worth their while. This has led to an enormous disparity in crop productivity between the developed world and the developing world. The use of GM approaches to increase yields, nutritional qualities, pest resistance, drought resistance, etc., in the indigenous crops in the developing world can be extraordinarily effective in raising those crops to the same levels as are found in the developed world. The advantage of using GM methods is that the improved crops can be brought to market much faster as the development time is much shorter. However, we need to make sure that the European anti-GMO activists do not stop these developments as they are still trying to do today. The purveyors of false information about GMOs need to be stopped by all means possible. They are actively killing people in the developing world.

It is being vocalised by some that GM mustard could cause cancer since GM mustard is herbicide-tolerant (HT) and HT technology is mostly carcinogenic. Is there any truth to this? 

I have not seen any scientific evidence for these assertions. Are they backed by science, or merely speculations by activists who want to scare people into abandoning the nutritious foods that can keep them alive? I suspect the evidence is non-existent and these arguments are the stuff of Hollywood scary movies.