32 I SEED WORLD EUROPE I SEEDWORLD.COM/EUROPE | OCTOBER 2026 “The roadmap aims to align priorities across stakeholders, identify research and infrastructure needs and strengthen col laboration throughout the plant breeding value chain,” says Natascha Weinberger, Ph.D., Research & Communication Officer at Plant ETP. Beyond identifying future research and innovation priorities, the pro ject will develop an implementation plan covering funding, policy and governance, helping turn the roadmap into a coordi nated European plant breeding research and innovation framework. Another example is the recently com pleted GeneBEcon project, which brought together 18 partner organisations from 11 European countries across research, aca demia, companies and the wider bioeco nomy. GeneBEcon explored applications of gene editing in potato and microalgae and examined how such technologies could support a more sustainable bioeconomy. Among the project’s expected impacts, modified potato starch varieties developed for specific processing requirements could potentially reduce chemical use by as much as 75,000 tonnes and energy consumption by 7.5 GWh annually across the EU. Plant ETP will also participate in the Horizon Europe funded Gain4Fruits pro ject, expected to start in early 2027. It will use genomic, phenomic and environmental data with AI and predictive breeding tools to develop more resilient grapevine and citrus varieties, with Plant ETP leading stakeholder and policy engagement. THE NGT QUESTION MOVES TO IMPLEMENTATION One of the most immediate policy priorities is New Genomic Techniques (NGT). After years of debate over how Europe should regulate NGT plants, the adoption of the new framework marked a major change in direction for European plant breeding, bringing to a close a regulatory journey that Seed World Europe has followed closely over several years. That debate entered a new phase in June 2026 with the adoption of the EU Regulation on plants obtained by certain NGTs and their products. Most of the reg ulation will apply from 17 July 2028. For Plant ETP, attention therefore moves from the legislative negotiations towards imple mentation. One issue the platform has identified concerns verification of whether a plant was developed using NGTs. That question sits within a broader discussion about how the technical criteria in the new Regulation will operate in practice, including concerns over whether provisions such as the 20-nucle otide threshold could unnecessarily limit some plant breeding applications. Vighi says Plant ETP considers it important that data requirements remain proportionate and that variety developers Germán Vighi, Executive Manager of Plant ETP retain sufficient flexibility to determine the most appropriate verification methodology. That reflects a broader principle behind the platform’s NGT work: implementation should provide regulatory certainty without creating unnecessarily prescriptive technical requirements that could restrict the use of new breeding approaches. The platform argues that its position carries particular value because research ers, farmers and representatives from the plant breeding and seed sector have to find common ground before a shared position is adopted. “NGTs are a good example of where our multi stakeholder character mat ters,” says Vighi. “Different groups bring different questions to the discussion, but our task is to identify where those perspec tives converge and develop positions that can command broad support.” MAKING PLANT BREEDING VISIBLE IN EUROPE’S NEXT RESEARCH PROGRAMME Money, inevitably, is another part of the equation. The European Commission has proposed a new Horizon Europe pro gramme covering 2028 to 2034, working in close connection with the proposed European Competitiveness Fund. For Plant ETP, the negotiations over the next EU research framework are an opportunity to strengthen recognition of plant breeding as a strategic research prior ity. The platform has previously highlighted the need for stronger and more sustained public investment in plant breeding research, a concern explored in an earlier Seed World Europe interview on the future of EU plant breeding and research funding. The platform has three principal objectives in this area. It wants agriculture and the bioeconomy to be explicitly rec ognised within the relevant funding win dows, closer alignment between European research priorities and the research needs of the plant breeding and seed sector, and greater consideration of the Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas devel oped by European Technology Platforms and partnerships when future programmes and funding priorities are designed. Plant ETP’s own Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, or SRIA, sets out priorities for plant research and innovation. For Vighi, the question is not simply how much funding is available, but whether research programmes recognise plant breeding’s contribution to wider European objectives. Those range from food security and agricultural competitiveness to cli mate adaptation and the bioeconomy. The European Commission’s Vision for Agriculture and Food, published in 2025, puts research, innovation, knowledge and skills among the elements needed to build a competitive and resilient European Natascha Weinberger, Ph.D., Research & Communication Officer at Plant ETP
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