GM Crops & Food

Genetic modification technology has been widely applied in agriculture in order to contribute to global food security. This is accompanied by concerns about the biosafety of these technologies, which may hinder their further development and application. In the last few decades, many studies have been conducted on risk assessment and management to ease the concerns on risks caused by this technology. However, concerns and controversial views still remain, including impacts of the technology on human health, the environment, and social-economic issues. In addition, with the fast development and application of new breeding techniques (NBTs) in agriculture, such as genome editing, gene drives, and synthetic biology, past experiences of genetic modification technology should be learned from and the potential risks of NBTs should be evaluated to ensure the effective application of these technologies for sustainable development. Tools and methodologies should be developed for this purpose. Valuable guidelines should be discussed for the future optimization of NBTs. Studies on practical application should be conducted and the potential risks should be evaluated and mitigated to a safe level.

This Collection aims to review previous experiences in risk assessment and management of genetic modification technology to inform the impacts and potential risks of NBTs as well as the development of appropriate tools/methodologies for such assessment. This information will also help to develop management strategies and regulatory policies. Some predicted risks have been actualized with the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops, e.g. the outbreak of secondary insects after the adoption of insect resistant GM crops, and potential weed problems caused by transgene flow. Potential risks may also be present when NBTs are applied in agricultural production. Therefore, it is important to generate more useful knowledge for risk assessment and management in a broader range of disciplines, including environmental and health studies as well as and ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI). In particular, the Collection seeks papers exploring but not limited to the following topics:

1. Past experiences in risk assessment, management, and regulation of GM crops.
2. Risk assessment, management, and regulation of those crops developed by NBTs.
3. Approaches and case studies for sustainability assessment of traditional GM crops and those crops developed by NBTs.
4. Monitoring, modeling, and mitigating the risk of traditional GM crops and those crops developed by NBTs, including approaches and case studies.
5. Economic benefits and risks of traditional GM crops and those crops developed by NBTs, including approaches and case studies.
6. The ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of traditional GM crops and those crops developed by NBTs.

Assoc. Prof. Wei Wei received a PhD degree in Botany from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include biodiversity conservation, biosafety assessment of biotechnology, and plant-environment interaction. He has more than 20 years’ experience in risk assessment and governance policy study of GM crops. He has recently studied the way forward to utilize past experiences with GE crops for evaluating those organisms developed by newly emerged breeding tools, such as gene drives and gene editing. He has authored/co-authored 30 scientific papers in English in international peer-reviewed academic journals in the area of risk assessment and biosafety evaluation of biotechnology.

Prof. Bao-rong Lu is the executive member of the National Biosafety Council who works in the biosafety research field for more than 20 years. He has been actively involved in research and teaching of botany, cytogenetics, evolutionary biology, population genetics, molecular evolution, biodiversity, conservation biology, and biotechnology and biosafety since 1978. He (and as a co-author) has published more than 300 academic articles, more than 170 of these were published in the SCI journals. These papers were frequently cited (<13,000 times) by other scientists. He is actively involved in the research of genetic diversity and evolution of wild relative species of agricultural plants, molecular evolution, and biosafety assessment of genetically modified crops, particularly the issue of transgene flow and its ecological/environmental consequences.

Dr. Ying Wang is the member of key laboratory of biodiversity and ecological engineering. Her research interests involve the competitiveness and ecological impact of GM lines introgression in population ecology, environmental adaptation and evolution of ecological species, exploitation of wild genetic resources and diversity conservation. Recently, much of her focus is on elucidating the mechanisms of ecological adaptation through non-coding RNA and epigenetics to provide strategies for biosafety issues in agricultural production.

All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member). Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is August 16, 2024.

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article