The approval of gene-edited crops in China has energized researchers

According to scientists, newly published guidelines will spur research into crops with higher yields and greater resilience to climate change.

Researchers in China are ecstatic about their government's approval of gene-edited crops, which they say will pave the way for the plants' use in agriculture and spur research into tastier, pest-resistant, and better adapted to a warming world.

Researchers have been rushing to submit applications to use their gene-edited crops since China's agriculture ministry released preliminary guidelines on January 24. These include the development of wheat varieties resistant to a fungal disease known as powdery mildew, as depicted in a paper published this week in Nature.

"This is fantastic news for us. "It opens the door for commercialization," says co-author and plant biologist Caixia Gao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Genetics also Developmental Biology in Beijing.

"The decision is a significant step forward for China," says Jin-Soo Kim, director of the Center for Genome Engineering at the Institute for Basic Science in Daejeon, South Korea.

China's new rules are more conservative than those in the United States, which do not regulate gene-edited crops that incorporate small changes similar to those that could occur naturally. Still, they are more lenient than the European Union's tough classification stance all gene-edited crops as genetically modified.

CRISPR–Cas9 technologies create gene-edited crops, which can make minor changes to DNA sequences. They differ from yields obtained through genetic modification in that the insertion of entire genes or DNA sequences from other plant or animal species is typically required. However, they have been subject to the same legislation as GM organisms in China.

Obtaining biosafety approval for a GM crop in China can take six years. However, researchers believe that the new guidelines outline the process for receiving a biosafety certificate for gene-edited crops could cut the approval time in half to two years.