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Submitted to: Workshop Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings Publication Acceptance Date: 11/1/2016 Publication Date: 1/2/2016 Citation: Nakata, P.A. 2016. Crop Science Applications. In: Franko M., Kelley, R., Mansfield, B., editors. Proceedings of the Gene Editing FDA-Regulation Technologies and Applications Workshop, November 1, 2016, Silver Spring, Maryland. p. 25-28. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: The final speaker, Paul Nakata from the USDA Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston, Texas, discussed manipulating the plant genome, with emphasis on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing. Dating back thousands of years ago, traditional and then mutational breeding was used to influence, for example, the size of crops including tomato, corn and wheat. While these age-old mechanisms of crop selection are effective at stacking useful traits, gene editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to more thoroughly determine which genes encode important traits and to make better crops where such genes are changed, Nakata said. This is important given that experts predict that we need to double crop production by the year 2050 to meet growing demand. |
