Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so they put it at the hear… Read More
Growing a crop in a growing season of 180 days can be hard. Breeding new varieties in such a climate provides even more challenges. Find out how the Finnish seed sector caters to this difficult environment. Finland Finland is located between the 60th… Read More
Eighteen national organizations representing agriculture and science communities recently joined together in signing a statement in support of the International Statement on Agricultural Applications of Precision Biotechnology (“the Internation… Read More
The European seed sector acknowledges the ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in case C-528/16 of 25. July 2018 by which the Court interpreted the provisions of the EU’s Directive 2001/18 in such a way that plants resulting from innovativ… Read More
The John Innes Centre is joining a call for the Government to address the implications of a European Union judicial ruling that classes gene-edited crops as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). An open letter, signed by leading research institution… Read More
Many members of the plant breeding sector in Europe are voicing their opposition against the 25 July ruling stating that crops obtained by mutagenesis are GMOs and are, in principle, subject to the obligations laid down by the GMO Directive. The Euro… Read More
Four of the United Kingdom’s leading universities and research centres have been given a £5.3 million (around €6 milllion) boost to fund their work on improving crop resilience, sustainability and quality. The recipients, including ENDURE partne… Read More
Plants can be genetically rewired to resist the devastating effects of disease – significantly reducing crop waste worldwide – according to new research into synthetic biology by the University of Warwick. Led by Professor Declan Bates fr… Read More
Understanding the functioning of root biology is crucial to know how plants suffer or adapt to adverse environmental conditions like droughts. Two recent studies describe these kinds of mechanisms: one of them, published in the journal Molecular Syst… Read More
Two parties have been battling for the rights to claim the patent for CRISPR, a genome editing system that will benefit the seed industry by allowing breeders to remove gene-based diseases in crops. The Broad Institution of the Massachusetts Institut… Read More
For the past five years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has revolutionized the field of gene editing due to its ease and low cost. But although this technology reliably finds and cuts the targeted stretch of DNA sequence, fixing that cut as desired has been … Read More
Towards the end of 2016, the EU adopted a new Plant Health Regulation which is planned to come into force in December 2019. Until then the EU Commission will work on so called secondary acts. European Seed asked Christophe Rouillard, Technical Manage… Read More
We repeat it so often it begins to sound almost trite: the diversity of crops is vital for our future. The human population is growing, the land available for food production is decreasing, climate change imposes greater stresses on food production, … Read More
The wheels on the wagon carrying the boxes with seeds rolls steadily on the frozen ground. Fredrik Olsson and Åsmund Asdal navigates skilfully through the narrow door and on the frozen floor. They’ve done this many times before. Åsmund Asdal is t… Read More
