Gene Editing Is Getting Faster; Commercialization Still Isn’t Developers are stacking speed, transparency and value chain buy-in to move gene edited traits from pipeline to commercialization without repeating the baggage of past biotech fights. By Aimee Nielson, Seed World U.S. Editor consumer expectations around flavor and quality. “We’re trying to address a lot of these chal lenges that we face right now, food security, human health, labor supply, supply chain,” Jenkins says. “We feel that plants have all the information that we need to make these things happen, but it’s up to us to deploy.” Still, speed does not eliminate the need for multi season validation, regional testing and commer cial scale proof. A faster edit does not remove the requirement for durable performance. Breeding remains breeding. CRISPR simply gives breeders sharper tools. The New Bottleneck is the System If the science has advanced, the commercialization pathway still demands strategy. Lark Seed Technology director of seed tech nology Yao Luo focuses on how smaller compa nies can use gene editing without absorbing the cost structures of larger biotech developers. She describes efforts to design editing systems that avoid foreign DNA and simplify regulatory review, particularly in processing tomatoes where disease pressure and post-harvest losses erode margins. Her broader point resonates beyond tomatoes. If gene editing remains expensive, complex and duplicative across regulatory agencies, only the largest players will use it widely. If developers can streamline submissions and align with regulatory guidance early, more companies can participate. The regulatory landscape itself, Jenkins says, is not as restrictive as many assume. “Generally speaking, the gene editing regula tions are in a really good place,” Jenkins says. “I don’t consider them to be much of a burden at all in most of the places we are.” The challenge is not whether a gene edited plant GENE EDITING HAS reached a point the seed industry once described as a break through moment. Proof of concept is no longer the barrier. CRISPR works. Developers can knock out genes, fine tune sequences and stack edits with precision. They can move from target identification to field testing in a fraction of the time conventional pro grams once required. But as gene editing matures, another real ity has come into focus. The science accelerates. Commercialization does not. That tension surfaced during a discussion at the American Seed Trade Association Vegetable and Flower Conference on the road from concept to crop. The message was clear: speed in the lab does not automatically translate to speed on the shelf. The real work begins after the edit. CRISPR Speeds Breeding. It Does Not Replace It Pairwise vice president of regulatory and govern ment affairs Dan Jenkins says gene editing acceler ates breeding, but it does not replace it. “One of the important points about CRISPR that isn’t always mentioned is that you’re still doing whatever you’re doing in a breeding program,” Jenkins says. “This just helps it go faster, makes it more efficient. Those costs lower barriers to doing the kinds of things that you want to do.” He points to projects where his team identi fies a target, generates multiple edited variants and advances them into the field quickly enough to evaluate yield, quality and stability within three years. That compressed timeline matters in crops facing mounting pressure from labor shortages, supply chain volatility, food security concerns and 20 / SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2026
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