In a recent opinion piece, a group of international researchers says that by barring specific genetic engineering techniques, the European Union is missing a critical opportunity to advance organic agriculture. If embraced, these techniques could help the bloc to meet its 25% organic farmland target by 2030, and close the roughly 20% yield gap in organic production, they say.
What they’re referring to are ‘new genomic techniques’ or ‘NGTs’. These aren’t conventional plant breeding methods, but nor do they strictly fit the definition of ‘genetically modified organisms’ or ‘GMOs’. As such, plants that are created using NGTs currently exist in a kind of regulatory limbo in the EU, where plant breeding is a contentious issue that has led to strict legal controls on how it is used.
New genomic techniques mostly involve targeted genetic changes to a plant’s existing genes. This can involve the use of tools like CRISPR-Cas9 to snip out and change portions of DNA. These small tweaks allow a range of possible benefits, from breeding crops that produce higher yields, are more resistant to certain pests and disease, are better able to tolerate drought, or even have higher concentrations of particular nutrients.
Because NGTs only tinker with a plant’s existing genes and typically don’t involve the transfer of foreign genes into a plant from another source, they are considered different to GMOs which can include these methods.
In fact, the researchers make a critical point in their paper: NGT techniques simply speed up processes that could happen naturally. As they explain, the same thing could be achieved with age-old crop breeding methods like back-crossing—but these methods can take decades to produce plants with the desired traits, whereas NGTs can whittle that time down to just a few months by identifying and directly targeting the relevant genes.
Because of these clear differences, in 2021 the EU recognized that NGTs require a distinct type of regulation from GMOs, which would regulate them more like conventional plants and allow their wider use. So in 2023 a proposal was made to facilitate that, and that is now going through the legislative process.
But herein lies the rub: that proposal for NGTs doesn’t extend to organic agriculture, where these methods would remain regulated as though they were GMOs, effectively banning NGTs from use in the sector. According to the paper, lawmakers say that’s because “NGTs are incompatible with the current concept of organic production and consumers’ perception of organic products.”
The researchers see this as a major missed opportunity. “To open the EU organic production standard to the possibility of including NGTs is supported by scientific evidence, which says that NGTs hold promise to make organic production more sustainable,” says Alexandra Molitorisová, chair of food law at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, and first author on the opinion piece.
A major boon of NGTs is their potential to boost organic yields, tackling a challenge at the core of organic farming, which typically produces less food per unit area. There are dozens of NGT crops under development that could help with this, such as work to increase a plant’s flowering rate, boost the number of seeds per husk, and improve root growth.
The authors believe that NGTs therefore hold huge potential to help the EU meet its 25% organic farmland target by 2030, without it having to encroach on more land to produce enough food.
Other research using NGTs involves deactivating certain ‘susceptibility genes’ that increase plants’ likelihood of developing particular diseases, while tweaking others has been shown to give plants resistance against the widespread problem of bacterial leaf blight. This also raises the role of NGTs not only to increase yields but to also reduce pesticide and herbicide use, says Molitorisová, which is a goal of many organic farms. Further research shows that editing single genes in maize can exert control over plant hormones that can significantly reduce a plant’s water use, too.
But organic agriculture will be deprived of these innovations and dozens more, if the EU legislation doesn’t adapt to include them, the opinion authors say. Molitorisová urges a reassessment of NGTs for organic agriculture: “The opportunity to do so is now, when the EU legislature recognizes that NGTs require new rules, different from GMOs and similar to conventional plants.”
Instead of only relying on top-down decision-making by lawmakers, the legislative process could also include more participation from citizens and those in the organic food and farming community, the opinion piece says. This would also reflect the more nuanced and evolving perspectives on NGTs and how they should be used, according to Molitorisová.
“The organic community is not a homogenous group. The official policies of some of the organic associations are one thing, but some of the researchers in the organic field and also some of the organic farmers themselves are more open than one might expect.”
To respond to sensitives around the use of NGTs, Molitorisová and colleagues even suggest that down the line, organic produce made using NGTs could be distinguished with ‘organic+NGT’ food labels, versus ‘organic-NGT’ for produce that’s not grown without these methods. This would give consumers agency over their food choices, while still allowing NGTs to enter the organic realm.
“If the risk is comparable to that of conventionally-bred plants, and the benefits are considerable…the organic market may be able to accommodate an organic+NGT option,” Molitorisová says.
“The legislation should enable that possibility.”
Molitorisová et. al. “New genomic techniques in organic production: Considerations for science-based, effective, and acceptable EU regulation.” Cell Reports Sustainability. 2025.
Image: ©Anthropocene
