Genetic improvement of crops

Humans have long made choices that changed the genetic composition of the plants in our diet. Selection for size and yield of grains and fruits, taste, resilience to frost, drought or disease, or plant architecture that is well adapted to cultivation or harvest have all led to differences between the traits and DNA sequences of modern crops and those of their wild ancestors.

The ability to move genes between species led to the development of the first regulatory frameworks in the 1990s for whether new crop varieties posed risks to human, plant or animal health. At the time it was feared that there might be something about the process of introducing new genetic material to crops that could lead to unpredictable risks. Since then, we now have an extensive body of evidence that shows that using genetic technologies to make new crop varieties is not inherently riskier than using breeding technologies that have been used for millennia (PDF). We also have evidence that the high costs of meeting regulatory requirements for genetically modified organisms has been a barrier to translating scientific discoveries into crops that farmers can grow. 

This barrier to translation is a major hinderance in the context of meeting increased demand for food without increasing impacts on the environment whilst also adapting to climate change. This is why the Royal Society produced the Enabling genetic technologies for food security (PDF) report, which looks at ways in which the regulatory framework for genetically modified crops could be applied in a way that is more proportionate to the risks of these crops.