KSLA-podden 13: Future Food Systems – genetic engineering in future agriculture

Changing climate needs new tools to secure future crops. Professor Pamela Ronald, keynote speaker in the webinar "Future Food Systems" on 15 October, talks about the possibilities of genome editing in future agriculture in this pod cast by Annika Åhnberg and Anders Nilsson.

Many farmers live on less than 3 dollars a day and depend on safe and good harvests. Genetic engineering and genome editing can help in developping crops with resistance to disease.

– Sustainability, safety, practicality, and costs are important factors also when developping new techniques in future agriculture, says professor Pamela Ronald in the pod cast. Modern biotechnology and genetic tools play an important role when climate changes force us to develop new tools to secure crops in the future.

Pamela Ronald is a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center, University of California, Davis, USA. She came to Sweden for the first time at the age of 23 on a Fulbright Scholarship and worked together with professor Nils Fries in Uppsala University for a year.

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Link to the pod cast

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The webinar was an initiative from the KSLA-project the Plant Node (Växtnodsprojektet). The meeting put gene editing within plant breeding into its context in different parts of the world – with a special focus on the European Union. It focussed on how these tools can contribute to improved food systems. Speakers were professors Pamela Ronald, Joachim von Braun, Jonathan Jones, Dennis Eriksson, and Lisa Sennerby Forsse. The meeting was organised by the KSLA Fellows Annika Åhnberg and Anders Nilsson.

The Project aims at developping a more constructive dialogue with EU politicians in the field of genome editing. The project is led by Annika Åhnberg, KSLA fellow and former Minister of Agriculture.