78 / SEEDWORLD.COM JUNE 2019 STATUS BELGIUM Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) has been granted a permit for its field trial with maize plants that contain small surgical CRISPR-induced herit- able changes. Obtaining this permit allows VIB to continue the field work that was already initiated in 2017. A European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling of July 2018 triggered a decision by the Belgian authorities that such a CRISPR experiment requires a permit. Before the ruling, this was not the case. The ECJ decided that small heritable changes (so- called mutations) induced through CRISPR are not exempt from the GMO legislation, even though the same mutations elicited via ionizing radiation or chemi- cals do not need to follow these rules. Nevertheless, there is scientific consensus that CRISPR allows one to produce desired modifica- tions in crops in a much more efficient and surgically accu- rate manner. The CRISPR technique can help with the development of crops that can contribute to important sustainability goals such as reducing the environmental impact of agriculture, making plants more robust against climate stress, improving the nutritional content of food crops, and protecting biodi- versity. In many cases, this involves the introduction of small heritable variations – mutations – that could arise spontaneously in nature or via traditional breeding methods. In these instances, world STATUS A look at seed industry developments around the globe. A Dubai-based gene bank containing the world’s largest population of heat- and salt-tolerant plant species has been opened to farmers, plant breeders and scientists. CRISPR-modified crops are indistinguishable from their traditional counterparts. VIB is happy to have been granted the permission but regrets that the CRISPR mutants from a legal point of view are treated differently than indiscernible traditional mutants for which a permit is not required. STATUS CHINA Chinese farmers are facing worsening problems with jointed goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii) ­­­growing in their wheat fields. Currently, mesosulfuron is the only wheat-registered foliar-applied herbicide that provides control of jointed goatgrass in China, but it often damages the wheat. Non-transgenic wheat varie- ties tolerant to imidazolinone (IMI) herbicides can solve these problems by allowing the use of IMI to control goat- grass. However, IMI herbicides persist in the soil and severely damage sensitive crops planted months and even years later. Therefore, non- transgenic crops with herbi- cide tolerance traits, coupled with low-risk herbicides, are badly needed by millions of multi-cropping farmers in their battle against weeds. Recently, a research team led by Profs. GAO Caixia and LI Jiayang at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGDB, CAS), together with associ- ate professor Jiang Linjian at China Agricultural University (CAU), generated several herbicide-tolerant wheat germplasms using base edit- ing to facilitate weed control in wheat fields. The work was sup- ported by grants from the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology. STATUS DUBAI A Dubai-based gene bank containing the world’s largest collections of genetic material of heat- and salt-tolerant plant species has officially been made available to farmers, plant breeders and scientists for the sustainable production of food from plants around the globe. The move is part of an agreement signed by the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, José Graziano da Silva, and director-general of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), Ismahane Elouafi, to expand existing cooperation between the two institutions on plant genetic resources, biosaline agriculture and climate change adaptation in the world’s mar- ginal environments. Under Article 15 of the agreement, the crop germ- plasm collection stored in ICBA’s gene bank will offi- cially become part of the Multilateral System of Access and Benefit-sharing. This multilateral system