Genetic Engineering in Agriculture 2021-2031

This market report provides a comprehensive view of the global market for genetic engineering in agriculture, focusing on crop biotechnology. The report provides in-depth technical and market insight into the different genetic technologies used in crop agriculture, including transgenics (GMOs), genome editing techniques (CRISPR, TALENs, ZFNs, etc.) and breeding strategies, while also exploring the regulatory and industrial landscapes in which they operate. The report provides a ten-year forecast for the future of the industry, identifying genome editing technologies as a key growth area.

 

IDTechEx research values the crop biotechnology market (i.e., seed produced by different methods of genetic manipulation) at $28.2 billion and forecasts it to reach $44.3 billion by 2031. Although the global crop seeds market has shown relatively modest growth over the last few years, the advent of genome editing techniques such as CRISPR and TALEN is set to change this, boosting industry growth over the next decade.

 

The report assesses the following:

 

The report is based on extensive research into the sector, including primary interviews with key industry players. The report contains analysis and data from over 20 companies, including Bayer (including Monsanto), BASF, Syngenta (ChemChina), Corteva Agriscience, Calyxt, Ginkgo Bioworks, Pivot Bio, and AgBiome.

 

 

This is not the first time that the world has faced a food crisis due to plateauing yields and growing populations. In the 1960s, famine threatened much of Asia, with Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller "The Population Bomb" predicting that famines centred in India would kill hundreds of millions across the following decades.

 

This bleak future was mostly avoided, largely thanks to the Green Revolution. Using selective breeding, American biologist Norman Borlaug created a high yield strain of wheat that led to more grain per acre, significantly boosting Mexico's agricultural output. Soon, similar strategies were used in India to develop high yield IR8 rice. These selective breeding strategies, alongside advances in fertiliser and mechanisation technologies led to a boom in global food production, with cereal production in Asia doubling between 1970 and 1995.

 

Selective breeding is just one of many techniques for manipulating the DNA of plants in agriculture to create improved seeds and traits. Over the past few decades, the genetic engineering tools available to scientists has expanded to include methods such as mutagenesis and transgenic breeding, the technique used to develop "genetically modified organisms" (GMOs). However, in recent years, technological advances such as next generation DNA sequencing and gene editing techniques such as TALENs, ZFNs and CRISPR-Cas9 have vastly expanded the capabilities of genetic engineering. This has led to much excitement in the field of agricultural biotechnology, with proponents hoping that modern genetic technologies could help usher in a new Green Revolution of agricultural productivity. Synthetic biology and manipulation of the crop microbiome could open a huge window of opportunities for boosting yields in previously inaccessible ways.

 

 

 

Despite its enormous potential, implementation of genetic engineering has often been controversial. Public hostility and negative consumer attitudes to GMOs, particularly in Europe, has contributed to a harsh regulatory landscape in many countries that has limited the uptake of GM crops across much of the world and presented major barriers to introducing new transgenic traits into crops. It can take several years and hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new transgenic crop, something which has contributed to consolidation in the agricultural biotechnology industry - currently four companies (Bayer, BASF, Syngenta and Corteva Agriscience) account for over 60% of the market.

 

However, this is beginning to change, largely thanks to new genome editing technologies. Gene editing, particularly CRISPR, is much quicker and easier to use than traditional transgenic breeding, leading to hopes that it could democratise the crop biotechnology market by significantly reducing barriers to entry.

 

 

 

Things could also be brighter for the regulations. In 2016, the US Department of Agriculture announced that a CRISPR-edited non-browning mushroom fell outside of if its GM regulations, mostly because the mushroom did not contain any foreign genes, only an edited version of its natural genome. The ruling opened the door for other genome edited crops and signalled a broader regulatory lenience towards gene editing in agriculture across much of the world. However, gene editing suffered a setback in 2018, when the European Court of Justice ruled that it fell under the EU's existing GMO regulations, leaving the technology in a state of limbo in the EU.

 

The rapid pace of technological development, coupled with the ongoing regulatory uncertainties, mean that genetic engineering in agriculture is currently at a pivotal point. Genetic Engineering in Agriculture 2021-2031 provides in-depth technical insight into the tools and techniques that underpin the field, as well as discussing the regulations and markets that will impact the industry's growth. Finally, the report provides a 10-year forecast into the market, forecasting the growth of the industry and discussing the key drivers and restraints that could decide the impact of crop biotechnology on the global agricultural landscape.

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