February 15, 2024 - Agroscope (Swiss Federal Academy of Agricultural Sciences) has received approval from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment to conduct field trials on spring barley. The trial will start in the spring of 2024 in the Zurich-Reckenholz Conservation Area and will last for three years to verify the yield-enhancing effect of the technology.
The CKX2 gene is involved in the regulation of seed formation, and disabling this gene can increase the yield of rice and rapeseed.
Researchers at the Free University of Berlin observed that barley has two slightly different copies of this gene. In collaboration with scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Research (IPK), they developed barley lines in which both copies were disabled. These lines grew more grains per ear in the greenhouse. The Swiss Federal Academy of Agricultural Sciences is currently investigating these barley plants in protected sites in collaboration with the Free University of Berlin to answer the following questions:
1. Do the plants also produce more grains per ear under field conditions, and does this lead to higher yields.
2. Do both copies of the gene need to be disabled, or is knocking out one sufficient.
3. Does disabling one or both copies of the gene change other characteristics besides yield under field conditions.
Although the barley lines produced in this way do not contain foreign DNA, unlike the plants previously studied in protected areas, the field trials require authorization from the Federal Environment Agency because they use new plant genomic technologies. Currently, countries are discussing the regulation of plants using new breeding technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9. According to the first ruling of the European Parliament last week, plants that occur by chance in nature (without foreign DNA) will be subject to less stringent regulation in the future. The Swiss Federal Council is expected to submit a proposal on how to envision a future authorization program for such GMPs in mid-2024.
