Argentina has streamlined its biotech crop regulatory framework to ensure neither red tape nor international trading partners’ policies hold up commercialization. The country, one of the first to embrace biotech crops, relied for two decades on a hodgepodge of agencies and rules to govern genetically modified (GM) crop commercialization (Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 393–395, 2010). A 2010 reform established a new Ministry for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, which updated and consolidated rules in 2012. This spring, the Ministry packaged those rules in a single booklet for commercial and academic growers. Continue reading Argentina cuts GM red tape
Category Archives: Nature Biotechnology
Spain nudges biotech from nest
The Spanish government has folded a nationwide tech transfer body into the central science foundation, ending a decade of special treatment for the biotech community. The Foundation for Genomic and Proteomic Development and Investigation, better known as Genoma España, was set up in 2002 in Madrid by the Spanish Science Ministry to incubate biotech businesses. Now its €4.5 ($6.2)-million budget is unlikely to go with it, Spanish science news outlet Materia reports. Continue reading Spain nudges biotech from nest
Forty fight rust and rot
More than 40 institutes around the world are teaming up to use biotech tools to improve food security in sub-Saharan Africa and India. The Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development (SCPRID) will provide a total £16 ($25.5) million for 11 projects aimed at developing crops that will resist pests or survive in harsh environments. Continue reading Forty fight rust and rot
BASF moves GM crop research to US
BASF Plant Science is relocating from its European headquarters to the US, a move prompted by the European public’s hostility to genetically modified (GM) crops, its president Peter Eckes said. The German company is also cancelling the development and commercialization of all projects destined solely for the European market and in future will concentrate on markets in America and Asia. Continue reading BASF moves GM crop research to US