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The National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio) classified as conventional the soybeans developed by Embrapa for drought tolerance, using the CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) gene editing technique. .
“By considering this soy as non-transgenic, the research processes are less bureaucratic and, therefore, we are able to reduce the time and costs for drought-tolerant cultivars to reach the market, with biosecurity assured”, celebrates Alexandre Nepomuceno, general manager from Embrapa Soja, and researcher Liliane Henning.
“Furthermore, there will be no need to carry out the complex process of commercial deregulation of a transgenic product, which is time-consuming and costly”, they highlight.
CTNBio's decision was based on the regulations that regulate the use of genetic editing techniques in Brazil, Normative Resolution No. 16 (RN16), following a request from Embrapa Soja (National Soy Research Center), based in Londrina. Embrapa Soja researchers used knowledge of soybean genetics involved in soybean responses to drought to develop the edited plant.
Firstly, the researchers identified in the Active Germplasm Bank (BAG), which is a collection of seeds with more than 65 thousand soybean accessions (different types of grain), which were the sources of drought tolerance.
“These sources of tolerance do not necessarily have the high productivity and health characteristics of commercial cultivars. Therefore, the research team's strategy was to use a highly productive cultivar to alter its DNA - via gene editing technique - this characteristic that aims to reduce productivity losses when drought events occur”, argues Nepomuceno.
In Embrapa Soja's greenhouses, which are controlled environments, the edited plant proved to be more tolerant to drought than the other standard plants with which it was compared. However, there is still a need to carry out field tests. Following this approval from CTNBio, Embrapa has the possibility to validate the edited plant in different soybean producing regions.
“With this decision by CTNBio, we will be able to, as a public company, test this technology in the field, and if we are successful, reduce losses due to lack of water in the field”, explains Nepomuceno. Once it is confirmed that the edited plant has drought tolerance characteristics, the soybean will follow the same development steps as a conventional cultivar.
“This soy will undergo tests that evaluate its value in terms of cultivation and use, as well as its behavior in different production environments. This process takes, on average, 3 years”, explains Henning.
Drought is a complex problem, of wide territorial scope and has a long history of severe damage caused to the national soybean crop. A survey by Embrapa Soja shows that, in the 2021/22 harvest, the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Mato Grosso do Sul lost more than R$70 billion in unharvested soybeans, due to the biggest drought in recent decades . “The technology we are developing aims to help mitigate these losses related to summer periods”, explains Nepomuceno.
Techniques to edit and modify the DNA of species have been used since the 1980s, but one of the most promising technologies in the area of genome editing is called CRISPR. This technique makes it possible to identify genes of interest in the DNA of the species under study and modify them, according to the research needs. The CRISPR methodology can be considered revolutionary because it allows the manipulation of genes with greater precision, speed and lower cost.
Embrapa Soja has been testing various gene editing methodologies since 2015. In September 2022, CTNBio approved the first edition of the soy genome, conducted by Embrapa using the CRISPR technique to deactivate some antinutritional factors (lectin). “The lectin, when present in poultry and swine feed, hinders the absorption of nutrients, hence the importance of its inactivation”, explains researcher Liliane Henning.
“In the feed industry, this inactivation is done by heat, which generates costs for the sector. With the soy we developed, the proposal is to reduce these costs and increase the efficiency of weight gain in animals that use these feeds”, he highlights. Both in the most drought-tolerant soybeans and in soybeans with deactivated antinutritional factors, Embrapa has used the CRISPR-Cas9 technique, after obtaining a license from the company Corteva.
CTNBio's decision, supported by Brazilian legislation (RN16), is in line with what has been happening in most countries that develop technologies for agriculture, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, China and Argentina. “The understanding is that biosafety is maintained when changes to DNA made using gene editing techniques reproduce mutations that could occur naturally or be obtained using traditional genetic improvement techniques”, reports Nepomuceno. Therefore, these organisms with edited genomes have not been considered transgenic organisms, but rather conventional ones”, he reinforces.
Nepomuceno points out that the European Union (EU), which was the only region in the world that still considered that any genetic alteration technique should be considered transgenics, changed its position in February 2023. “Europe was the last major global player to Consider these organisms with an edited genome transgenic. This EU decision is a big step towards the harmonization of global legislation regarding the use of biotechnology techniques, mainly in agriculture”, highlights Nepomuceno.
According to him, the countries that initially adopted this procedure are already seeing an increase in the formation of small and medium-sized companies working in this area of gene editing. “There is a democratization in the use of these techniques, allowing more technological options for the production sector. If more companies participate in this market with different technologies, this will help reduce costs in the medium and long term,” he says.
Embrapa had already developed drought-tolerant plants via transgenics, using genes from other soybean plants. “Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding this important technology has made the cost of commercial release prohibitive for public companies like Embrapa, or our universities. Now, in the era of gene editing, we have a great chance to bring important technologies to agriculture”, explain Nepomuceno and Henning.
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