“We are able to make changes in a similar way to what happens in nature”

“All the new technologies applied to [plant] breeding are the result of the development of scientific knowledge and its application to a practice that goes back 10,000 years,” defended InPP's executive director, during the event. webinar “Debates on Biotechnology: from Agriculture to the Bioeconomy”. “The ability we have to improve plants so that they produce what we need is not something that suddenly appears,” recalled Pedro Fevereiro, in the session entitled “Biotechnology in agriculture and agro-industry”.

The event, organized on June 7 by the Portuguese Farmers' Confederation (CAP) and the Portuguese Bioindustry Association (P-BIO), as part of the National Agriculture Fair 2021 and BIOMEET Sessions 2021, “We are now able to intervene at specific points in order to make changes in a similar way to what happens in nature,” explains Pedro Fevereiro. The InPP CEO recalls that these NTGs derive from our current ability to sequence the genomes of all organisms, particularly plants - which allows us to know at what point we need to act in order to alter plant characteristics so that they behave as we want them to, be it with an increase in productivity, an increase in tolerance to environmental factors, etc.

NTG also allows for a much more regional adaptation to the needs of producers and consumers. “One of the big differences is that we don't introduce new DNA sequences into plants, or we introduce very small sequences.” For Pedro Fevereiro, the concern about biodiversity is really a false question, since we've always been looking for more adaptable plants and “what can affect biodiversity are bad agricultural practices”. For a CoLab like InPP, which is dedicated to developing bio-inspired technologies for crop protection, NTG is the most advanced way of managing the genome of plants so that they resist pests and diseases, particularly emerging ones, in the context of reducing the use of traditional phytopharmaceuticals.

One of the aspects enshrined in the GMO directive, which dates back to 2001, is that the legislation should be adjusted in line with the evolution and practice of these techniques, recalls the director of the InPP, concluding that “we should have started ten years ago”. Not least because only NTGs will make it possible to respond to consumer requests in good time.

The three speakers on this panel, moderated by CAP's secretary-general Luís Mira, were unanimous: communication about NTGs needs to be more effective than that regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the 1990s, and it needs to reach the general population, agreed the deputy director-general of the Directorate-General for Food and Veterinary (DGAV), and Pedro Queiroz, director-general of the Federation of Portuguese Agri-Food Industries (FIPA). Paula Carvalho, who mentioned the case of wheat in Germany and France, which has already reached stagnation in terms of production capacity, even hopes that “European legislative adaptation won't take too long”.