b'EDITORS MESSAGETHE WORLD GOT A NEW PAIROF SCISSORSanimals, plants and microorganisms withby at least 50%, while ensuring no dete-extremely high precision.rioration in soil fertility; a reduction of Their invention already has had afertilizer use by at least 20%; and 25% of revolutionary impact on life sciences,total farmland to be organically farmed. despite the fact that the tool is less thanAnd these very ambitious goals (some say a decade old. Adding to the revolution- unrealistic), cant be achieved without ary impact of the invention, it is goodthe tremendous and ongoing efforts of to realize that most Nobel Prizes arethe plant breeding and seed sector. These based on research that spans two, three,sectors will prove to be crucial going for-or more decades. Just imagine that inward and achieving those goals. But plant 2011, there were less than 100 publishedbreeding is a long process, and on average papers on CRISPR. And this year (2020),it takes six to 15 years to create a new that number had risen to over 35,000!variety. With CRISPR we could achieve Doudna and Charpentier published theirthe same result much faster and with ground-breaking scientific publicationmore precision and accuracy. Marcel Bruins on CRISPR in 2012 and since then itThe trouble is that since the infamous has received more than 6,000 citationsdecision in July 2018 by the European I n a long-expected move, the Royalalready. There are only 700 scientificCourt of Justice (ECJ), Europe is faced Swedish Academy of Sciences decidedpapers out of 50 million, published sincewith the fact that the CRISPR technique to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry1970, have received that many. (and several other very promising ones) 2020 to Emmanuelle Charpentier andCRISPR-CAS has opened up ave- falls within the legal definition of genetic Jennifer Doudna, for the developmentnues to more efficient plant breedingmodification. The costs of developing and of a method for genome editing. Moreand researchers have already been ablegetting approval for a genetically modi-precisely they got the prize for being theto develop the first crops that are able tofied plant variety is estimated at well over inventors of the CRISPR-CAS genomebetter withstand climate threats, such as100 million. So, the ECJ decision places editing tool. Finally, Well deserved,drought tolerance, as well as new pestsCRISPR fully out of reach for many small History was made and Years in theand diseases. But CRISPR is also contrib- and medium sized plant breeding compa-making were some of the frequent termsuting to new cancer therapies, and manynies, as well as for the public sector plant to describe the decision.important discoveries in basic research. breeders and only the largest companies And whats more, with four womenNot only the academic world jumpedwould have the resources to benefit from in total receiving a Nobel Prize in 2020,on the invention. Many new companiesCRISPRs full potential. it marks an important step towardswere created to develop products with theLets hope that the Nobel Prize for acknowledging the important role thathelp of this technique, from therapies forCRISPR will provide sufficient recog-women play in research and arts. Thegenetic diseases to engineered crops. Andnition and awareness to push for a sci-Nobel Prize started in 1901 and as ofparticularly relevant in our pandemicence-based decision process and speed 2020, out of 930 winners, only 57 womentimes: scientists have even developed aup the regulatory discussion on the use of have won the Nobel Prize (6 per cent).CRISPR-based test to detect SARS-CoV-2,this technique and other plant breeding CRISPR is actually the defence mech- the virus that causes COVID-19. innovations. If we want to make a seri-anism of bacteria against virus attacks.And why is this all so important?ous effort at achieving the Farm to Fork A lot of scientists have deciphered piecesElsewhere in this issue you will readgoals, we will need CRISPR and other new of the system and Charpentier, who ismore about the EU Green Deal and itstools for the EU plant breeders so they director of the Max Planck Unit for theFarm to Fork Strategy. These policies setcan fully explore its great potential to the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germanya number of goals to be reached by 2030,benefit of us all. and Doudna, who is a professor at thesuch as a reduction by 50% of the use and University of California, Berkeley, U.S.,risk of chemical pesticides; a reductionMarcel Bruinsdiscovered that with the help of CRISPR- by 50% of the use of more hazardouseditorial director, European SeedCAS it was possible to change the DNA ofpesticides; a reduction of nutrient lossesmbruins@issuesink.com4IEUROPEAN SEEDIEUROPEAN-SEED.COM'