Thread by @RewildingS

1/22 #Rewilding and agriculture is a highly debated topic, but what if we stretch it even further to include the crops themselves? In this #rewildingscience Palmgren et al explore rewilding with crops, reverse-breeding hardy varieties with the added benefits of modern cultivars

2/22 current agricultural practices have been developed over the past 10000 y to feed >7 bn people, however projections suggest that a rising global population will not be sustainable without some innovative thinking

3/22 Expansion of agricultural land brings us back to issues of ecosystem health, driving towards solutions of ‘sustainable intensification’ that incorporates biodiversity. A potential solution could be modern biotechnological techniques, but GMOs remain a controversial issue

4/22 Crop domestication involved selecting for beneficial, spontaneous traits. This leads to easy harvest and high yield however negative traits (resistance to drought, flooding, pathogens etc) are rarely selected against. As such hardy survival traits have been weakened or lost

5/22 Reverse-breeding (rewilding) of crops means breeding back to nature using wild relatives to actively reverse unintended weak traits. This is now feasible due to new sequencing technology, and will allow crops to utilise their environment and have higher nutritional value

6/22 Maize domestication shows how selection of traits can cause others to disappear. The gene DGAT (produces healthy fatty acids) underwent a partial deletion during domestication. Introducing this gene into modern varieties has resulted in the production of this oil once again

7/22 In this paper ‘rewilding’ is used to explore how this can be done using genes from conspecific wild varieties of crop plants. Standard introgression breeding can do this however this is a lengthy process, leading to the exploration of gene-specific reverse breeding…

8/22 There are two ways of doing this; full length modern genes can be replaced with ancient ones (Cisgenesis) or individual mutations that occurred in ancient genes during domestication can be identified in modern genes and reverted (Precision mutagenesis)

9/22 Transgenesis and GMOs, in general, are controversial and it is important to consider the legal, ethical, and economic feasibility of such practices

10/22 EU regulation of crops resulting from biotechnology is grounded in the basis that there is a difference between conventional and biotechnologically derived crops based on methods used to generate them. As such rewilded plants made by the methods discussed count as GMOs

11/22 Socially – GM plants are linked to higher levels of perceived risk in Europe compared to the US. While surveys indicate a preference for cisgenic compared to transgenic crops, most EU respondents found both to be unnatural and cisgenenics to be unlike conventional breeding

12/22 ...The significance of the plant modifications on production plays a key role in acceptance. Autonomy is also seen as important as does the closeness to ‘naturalness’. The last point could be addressed using cisgenic methods, however would this be deemed natural enough?

13/22 Economically – Two fundamental questions asked by economists that are important in this issue are: what aspects give rise to scepticism and lack of willingness to buy biotech-derived products, and what factors enhance or reduce this scepticism?

14/22 Typically people expect to pay less for bio-tech derived foods. Would this be a case for reverse-bred crops? Acceptance is linked to enhancing quality and provision of information, with who is giving information on the product being important (firms, scientists, non-NGOs)

15/22 Biotech-derived crops have been designed to benefit farmers through reduced risks and costs. Likelihood of willingness in crop adoption reveal that expected profitability is an important driver, but so are viewpoints of neighbours and the public

16/22 Evidence suggests consumers prefer food without biotech-derived traits and would pay less for it if it did. Restricted versions of GM (rewilded crops) would be deemed more acceptable than transgenic varieties. This highlights a potential benefit of reverse-bred varieties

17/22 Ethically – the paper assumes that public scepticism is fuelled by a) intrinsic unnaturalness b) adverse risks and health effects and c) exploitation of farmers, sustainment of traditional human life forms and other social injustices i.e. profits reaped by large companies

18/22 Based on dominant ethical theories, risks and adverse effects would have to be estimated using best available scientific evidence…

19/22 …However, ethically speaking, public scepticism would count in favour of restrictive GM policies. conversely, the preference of others, as well as future generations have the potential to outweigh this and promote the development of bio-tech derived crops

20/22 The authors conclude by stating that ‘ developing crop plants through the use of rewilding, with…input regarding legal social, economic and ethical feasibility, may provide a more socially acceptable route…of plant biotechnology'

21/22 This paper was a different angle for rewilding but brings up many similar issues of legality, benefits, and ethics, which is covered in depth in the full paper! I highly recommend reading this paper for the ethical discussion alone

22/22 To read the paper in full follow this link: ask-force.org/web/Regulation…

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