b'While Latin America Faces Difficulties in Terms of New Breeding Techniques, Theyre Up to the ChallengeDr. Miguel Rapela, an agricultural engineer specializing in genetics and plant breeding, teaches Seed World about the challenges facing the Latin American seed sector.Seed World (SW): Miguel, canThe advances, concrete results and you tell us whats going on rightpapers published by institutions such as now in terms of plant breedingEMBRAPA in Brazil, CIAT in Colombia, innovation in Latin America? AreCINVESTV in Mexico, Universidad de you seeing new innovations, likeCosta Rica, or INTA and the University of gene editing, come into play? Buenos Aires in Argentina are eloquent Miguel Rapela (MR): Certainly, theexamples.answer to your question is very positive. In the last few years, we are observ- SW: Have you seen any challenges ing with great attention that several Latinin the Latin American area when it American countries are applying in plantcomes to plant breeding innovation? breeding programs a great variety ofMR: The challenges facing the region are techniques based on advances in bio- many, varied and on different fronts. Let\'s technology, molecular biology, genomicgo from what I consider very problematic sequencing, accelerated breeding, andto what is better.marker-assisted breeding, plus a signifi- I believe that one of the most impor-cant contribution from bioinformatics. Intant challenge facing plant breeding in general, we could speak of an intensiveLatin America is the scarce access to use of New Breeding Techniques (NBT),and use of genetic resources. As we all but it is impossible avoid mentioning theknow, several and large regions of Latin fact that gene editing using the CRISPR- America are megadiverse in plant genetic Cas system is dominant.resources, most of them unexploited and The possibility offered by gene editingmany still unknown.through CRISPR-Cas to facilitate targetedAs I have discussed in several papers and specific modification of the genome,rapidly and much more extensively thanand books, for many years, genetic allowing selective mutations of one orin the past. There is a broad consensusresources in general and plant genetic several genes and/or their modificationthat the relative ease and economy ofresources have been considered or replacement, is fascinating. Never haveCRISPR-Cas gene editing compared tocommon heritage of humanity and of plant breeders had such a powerful tooltransgenic biotechnology has enabled afree access for any person interested in their hands. "democratization" of innovation. Althoughin their use. However, the Convention on Another point to mention is that geneI do not personally like this term, sinceBiological Diversity (CBD), ratified by a editing has also brought the possibility ofthis would be to assume that transgenesishuge number of countries in the world applying this technology to crops of enor- is anti-democratic, which is absurd, whatand almost all countries in the Americas, mous regional and local importance, suchis certain, and concrete is that now bothchanged the issue. The CBD recognized as banana, pineapple, rice, beans, potato,the most important public institutionsthe sovereignty of States over their tomato, and cassava. and small and medium-sized private seedgenetic resources subject to domestic What we observe is that innovationcompanies are working at full speed withregulation (and in some cases, such as in plant breeding is being applied verythese new technologies. in Argentina, the Federal Government 112/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2022'