Thirty years after the first genetically modified tomato went on sale, the promise to revolutionise farming with genetic technologies remains largely unfulfilled. But 2025 could be a turning point, with new products demonstrating the untapped potential to reduce the losses of animals and crops to diseases.
In the coming year, regulatory authorities in the US are expected to approve a pig gene-edited to make it resistant to a common and devastating disease. That approval could open the door to a much wider use of the technology.
2025 should also see field trials in the Philippines of a banana altered to be resistant to a major fungal disease that has spread to many countries worldwide. If the Philippines adopts the banana, other countries may follow suit.
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It is estimated that, globally, between 20 and 40 per cent of livestock and crops are lost to pests and diseases. Reducing these losses would have many benefits, from helping keep food prices down to making farming more profitable and reducing the environmental damage it causes. In fact, making farm animals resistant to viruses such as flu could even help reduce the risk of another pandemic.
So far, however, so-called Bt crops designed to resist various pests are the only genetically modified (GM) plants of this kind to be widely grown. In 1998, GM papayas resistant to a viral disease saved Hawaii鈥檚 papaya industry, but adoption of disease-resistant plants elsewhere has been slow because of opposition to GM foods. There is no large-scale production of any kind of GM animal.
The international breeding company Genus might just change this. It has used CRISPR gene editing to make four breeding lines of pigs resistant to the airborne virus that causes porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). affected by PRRS, so it leads to major losses globally.
鈥淲e continue to make progress with FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] approval of our PRRS-resistant pigs, and are still on track for approval some time in 2025,鈥� says Clint Nesbitt at Genus.
The rollout of the PRRS-resistant pigs will also depend on approval being granted in the major export markets for US pork, so sales might not begin until 2026. Once the necessary approvals are in place, Genus expects strong demand given the huge losses farmers suffer because of the disease.
Indeed, the head of a pig-producing company in the UK, Robert Beckett, has as soon as possible. 鈥淚 am fully supportive of the adoption of the technology to help tackle the devastating condition of PRRS in the pig industry,鈥� says Beckett.
Another destructive disease is caused by a fungus called TR4 that infects and kills most edible bananas, including the world鈥檚 most popular variety, the Cavendish. A team led by at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia has made the Cavendish banana resistant to TR4 by adding a gene from a wild banana.
These bananas have been approved in Australia, but the country is one of the few that is managing to keep TR4 under control. Wider adoption depends on the bananas鈥� rollout in other countries, with field trials due to begin soon in the Philippines. 鈥淚f all goes well, they should be planted in the field around the end of February,鈥� says Dale.
These fields trials were delayed by a Greenpeace-orchestrated court ruling that banned the growing of GM crops in the Philippines. This has been partially reversed, allowing the trials to go ahead, but the growth of golden rice modified to be richer in provitamin A remains banned.
