9/4/18 - Paul Vincelli - Can CRISPR Displace Pesticides?
Channel: GES Center
Date: 04/09/2018

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Full details: https://research.ncsu.edu/ges/event/paul-vincelli-can-crispr-displace-crop-pesticides/

Speaker: Paul Vincelli, PhD; Extension Professor and Provost’s Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Kentucky’s Department of Plant Pathology

Abstract: Many farmers perceive benefits from pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, nematicides, and bactericides). However, legitimate concerns exist over pesticide residues in food and in the environment, and almost everyone is in favor of reducing pesticide use wherever possible.
A remarkably wide range of traits can now be engineered in crops as a result of four trends: explosive growth in nucleic acid sequencing technologies; massive and rapidly expanding bioinformatic databases; increasingly sophisticated bioinformatic tools; and, most recently, the emergence of CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies.
With 35 years of academic study of disease-control chemicals in diverse crops in diverse regions, I see present-day genetic technologies (most especially gene editing) as offering important opportunities to reduce pesticide use in our diverse farming systems. But under what circumstances might we expect such reductions? Can crop genetics for disease resistance be deployed sustainably? Who will be the beneficiaries of genetic traits that reduce pesticide dependence? And how can we assure that CRISPR-based applications for disease and insect control on the farm are consistent with broadly shared values?