China now controls 75% of edited seed patents, but the MAPA urges to regain ground and get ahead of EU regulations
- BIOVEGEN notes how European restrictions on new genetic editing techniques (NGT’s) have reversed global leadership in plant improvement: in 2015, the EU led innovation; by 2024, the Asian giant will have quintupled European registrations
- The regulation for NGT’s will be approved in May, but it will not take effect until 2028. Agriculture will facilitate having everything “ready” to protect edited plants by that date and encourages the sector to also take advantage of the upcoming EU regulation, which is in progress, regarding edited microorganisms
- The assembly of this biotechnological platform, under the leadership of José Pellicer, notes its spectacular growth – it was founded in 2005 with 20 members and today includes 185, many of the main centers and companies in the country – and supports the appointment of José M. Fontán as its new president
- BIOVEGEN approves an alliance with the Spanish Society of Horticultural Sciences (SECH), one of the largest agricultural scientific societies in the country, comprising over 450 researchers
Madrid, 23-4-2026.- 75% of the patents for genetically edited seeds are from China. The restrictions of the European Union (EU) still in place today regarding the development of NGTs (New Genomic Techniques, as it is known in English) have probably been decisive for the innovation in plant improvement to have been reversed in less than a decade. As far back as 2014, the EU was leading the ranking, with 3,464 plant protection applications registered with UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants), while China was second (2,125) and the US was third (1,588); by 2024, the Asian giant was already leading with a figure five times that of Europe (16,177 compared to 3,268 EU applications and 1,268 from the US). These eloquent data were announced last week during the general assembly of BIOVEGEN, the science-business platform for promoting agricultural biotechnology. It was the director of innovation and agri-food development at the Cajamar Group Foundation, Manuel Lainez, who, analyzing the geopolitical situation in the West, indicated a hopeful change in the European strategy: “The post-Ukraine and post-COVID world has shown that food supply chains are vulnerable. Until recently, for Brussels, only energy sovereignty was considered strategic. Today it is clear that food also plays a role, and plant biotechnology is no longer just science. It is geostrategy.”
In recent days, significant steps have been taken to realize this. On April 21, the Council of Europe adopted its final position on the future regulation of NGTs, and in May it will be the Parliament that approves it in a second reading, so the regulation could be published in the DOUE during the second half of the year. However, as advanced by Ana Judith Martín, the representative of the Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) and secretary of the Interministerial Council of Genetically Modified Organisms (CIOMG), the regulation for improved plants through methods such as CRISPR will not come into effect until 2028. Aware of the effervescent activity already recorded in the field of genetic editing, Martín encouraged Spanish companies and research centers that participated in the BIOVEGEN call to “get ahead” of this date and begin the preparatory work for the registration of their varieties. “MAPA will facilitate companies to have everything ready so that when it comes into effect in 2028 they can protect their varieties. Even at the level of field trials, we are quick to grant authorizations, and doing them under the current directive (of Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs) does not mean that later the variety will not be registered as NGT-1,” she clarified.
Martín used the nomenclature (NGT-1) employed in the historical commitment text agreed upon by the European Council in December, which concluded the slow legislative communications process, in whose initiation it itself – coinciding with Spain’s presidency of the EU in 2023 – played a leading role as a representative of MAPA. However, it was Concepción Novillo, Director for Regulatory Policies of Seeds and Biotechnology at Bayer Crop Science, who provided detailed insights on this new regulation and the stages still to be covered. Indeed, the plants that will be considered NGT-1 will benefit from the greatest flexibility and speed in processing protection applications since they will be exempt from going through the complicated specific risk assessment process of the current directive (from 2001) for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), which are those that introduce foreign DNA into their genome. “Varieties developed by the latest improvement methods should not be regulated differently if they are similar and indistinguishable from those that could have been obtained by previous improvement methods,” the expert pointed out in this regard. And this has been the guiding principle that initiated the global race for the regulation of genetic editing, in which Europe has accumulated significant delays. The list of those who have advanced ahead of it is long: Argentina first, but also Canada, the USA, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Japan, Australia, or India, and even in Europe, after Brexit, the United Kingdom, as well as African countries like Nigeria, Ghana, or Kenya. All of them, according to Novillo’s exposition, have addressed the specificity of these techniques in their regulations and created their own standards for NGT plants, distinct from those for GMOs. China, on the other hand, considered these plants as genetically modified but practically approved a simplified process for their authorization. In its proposal, the EU distinguishes plants achieved through gene editing between the referred NGT-1 and NGT-2, whose processing is inspired by GMO regulations regarding stringent requirements for risk assessment, traceability, and mandatory labeling. The difference between NGT-1 (flexible) and NGT-2 (with treatment similar to GMOs) will depend on a criterion that the scientific community questions: whether more than 20 genetic modifications are made in the edited plant.
On the horizon and as a result of this change in European strategy, more developments are emerging that will reactivate agricultural biotechnology: the reform of the fertilizers regulation is advanced – which will recognize new biofertilizers and bionutrition -; work is underway on the Omnibus package for food simplification, which will differentiate biostimulants from phytosanitary (chemical) products and will accelerate the registration of biopesticides, and there will also be changes in the regulation of plant reproductive material (that of vineyards). This package also includes provisions to provide legal certainty to products (enzymes, additives, flavors, new foods) resulting from precision fermentation with genetically modified microorganisms (GMMs). This was addressed by the representative of the MAPA, who focused on explaining another initiative, known as the ‘Biotech Act,’ related to the simplifying drive of the aforementioned Omnibus package. Martín specifically informed about the start of the reform process for the legislation applicable to the marketing of the referred GMMs – which are currently also regulated by the same directive on GMOs. Thus, in line with the proposal for plant editing, the new text – as he advanced – will allow “greater adaptation to the specific requirements for information and risk assessment, detection and identification and will create a category of ‘low-risk GMMs’ that could be subjected to a faster authorization procedure and if justified, will not have to implement environmental monitoring plans.”
Pellicer, the architect of BIOVEGEN
Held at the headquarters of the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) in Madrid, the general assembly, where all these innovations were presented, served to assess the management carried out by José Pellicer as president during more than two decades of BIOVEGEN’s history. As its director, Gonzaga Ruiz de Gauna, noted, “we were founded in 2005 to replicate the structure that France and Germany already had to facilitate the transfer of biotechnology to agriculture. At that time, we had 15 companies and 5 research centers. Today, BIOVEGEN has 185 members, and the results, in terms of project development, validate Pellicer’s trajectory.” After recognizing this, the assembly confirmed the appointment of José María Fontán, also linked to the Spanish company Eurosemillas, as the new president of the platform.
The BIOVEGEN assembly also ratified, with the participation of the president of the Spanish Society of Horticultural Sciences (SECH), Francisco José Arenas, a new alliance signed by both entities. The agreement with one of the largest agricultural scientific societies in the country, composed of over 450 researchers, will allow collaboration in hosting meetings, conferences, and workshops on agricultural biotechnology, as well as in disseminating them and materializing research projects in this field.
Check the article at
- FruitToday
- Agronews Comunitat Valenciana
- Valencia Fruits
- Fruit Portal
- AgroDiario Huelva
- Market Magazine
Program and presentations
9:30 am. General Assembly BIOVEGEN (HYBRID Session. Exclusive for BIOVEGEN members)
11:30 am. Networking Coffee
12:00 pm. BIOVEGEN Session “Towards precise, efficient, and sustainable plant production” (IN-PERSON Session. Open to the entire sector. Priority attendance for BIOVEGEN members)
- State Agency for Research (AEI). José Manuel Fernández de Labastida. General Director
- BIOVEGEN. José Pellicer. President
12:15 pm. Agri-food, biotechnology, and geopolitics
- Manuel Lainez. Director of innovation and agri-food development. Cajamar Group Foundation
12:35 h. Genetically edited crops and microorganisms: news and perspectives
- Ana Judith Martín de la Fuente. Secretary of the Interministerial Council of Genetically Modified Organisms (CIOMG). Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA)
- Concepción Novillo. Director for Regulatory Policies of Seeds and Biotechnology in Europe. Bayer CropScience.
13:15 h. CONVERGE CSIC Program: Science at the service of societal challenges
- Ana Castro. Vice President of Innovation and Transfer. CSIC
13:35 h. TRL BOOST Program: Innovative biocides for plant health
- Azucena González. Research Professor. Institute of Agricultural Sciences (ICA-CSIC)
13:45 h. Spanish Society of Horticultural Sciences and BIOVEGEN: alliance for science-business innovation
- Francisco José Arenas. IFAPA and President SECH
- Gonzaga Ruiz de Gauna. Director BIOVEGEN
14:00 h. Conclusions and closure
- José Moisés Martín. General Director. CDTI
Cocktail networking