PLANT SCIENCES RESEARCHER SEEKS TO HELP BEGIN NEW TECHNOLOGY Plant sciences Assistant Professor Sadanand Dhekney
REGULATIONS DIALOGUE
Plant sciences Assistant Professor Sadanand Dhekney is Dhekney is a faculty member in the Department of part of an effort through the Society for In Vitro Biology to Plant Sciences and based at the Sheridan Research and start a dialogue to develop new guidelines and regulations Extension Center. He uses techniques in breeding and for emerging biotechnologies. biotechnology, along with improved Technologies like CRISPR (Clustered management practices, for expanding regularly interspaced short palindromic grapevine production in Wyoming. “The technology is so repeats) and TALENS (Transcription The new technologies for modifying new, the government activator-like effector nucleases) are plants are creating gray areas, he says. making obsolete the regulations put into “They are considered non-GMO crops doesn’t have any place for genetically modified crops more by the government now but people against regulations in place.” than 20 years ago. GMO consider CRISPR (crops) to be The society is emphasizing the issue at GMO,” he says. “The technology is so its 2017 conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, June 10-14. new, the government doesn’t have any regulations in place.” Old technology inserts genes into plants to modify crops, The current regulatory protocols are obsolete for what such as making them herbicide-resistant. is happening. “The next generation has nothing to do with inserting genes “Nobody is starting a dialogue on this process,” says in plants,” says Dhekney, who co-chairs the Plant Biotechnology Dhekney. “It needs to start somewhere, and the conference section for the society’s 2017 meeting. “The existing genes in is the first step toward a dialogue for a framework for plants are modified; nothing new is added.” developing protocols for these emerging technologies.”
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