The Development of Gene-Edited Crops is Permitted in the UK Due to a Climate Battle

 

    

    The government of Britain plans to allow their researchers to increase yields of crops and limit the need for pesticides by using gene-editing. Scientists could be able to use the process of gene-editing to speed up the time it takes for the crops to grow, and not take away any of the nutrients in the crops.  The scientists in the UK do not want to genetically modify their crops, they just simply want to edit the genes to benefit the people of Britain.  Genetic modification moves a gene from one species, and adds it to another, while gene editing just changes the current genes of the single species.  Gene-editing is believed to be the solution for the changing climate, food security, and biodiversity loss in the United Kingdom.  The researchers will conduct field test and trials to master this tool before it is used in large quantities, but if all goes well, gene-editing will be able to provide disease resistance, more nutrients, and ability to adjust to extreme climates just by making small changes to the crop's DNA.

    Genetically modified organisms and genetic editing in organisms are much different, both providing similar out comes.  Genetically modified organisms are created by removing the targeted gene from one organism and introducing it to a totally different organism.  This is a much bigger, and riskier operation than gene-editing.  Genetic editing is a much smaller scale procedure, where a small tweak to the existing DNA of an organism is done to try and create a desired trait in that organism.  It is such a small edit, that it is very difficult to determine if an organism has been edited, or if the trait is from a naturally occurring mutation in the genetic makeup. 

    The genetic editing of crops in the UK should be a positive thing in order to help out with plant growth in the presence of the new extreme climates due to a recent climate control battle. 

https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2021-09-29/uk-permits-development-of-gene-edited-crops-in-climate-fight 

https://global.wf.com/hub_article/genetically-modified-vs-gene-editing/