First Swiss Field Trial with CRISPR/Cas9-Modified Barley
Agroscope has been granted approval by the Federal Office for the Environment for a field trial with spring barley. The focus is on a barley gene that has been disabled by new breeding techniques. The trial, which will be launched in spring 2024 on the Protected Site in Zurich-Reckenholz and will run for three years, aims to determine whether yields can be increased in this manner. The CKX2 gene is involved in the regulation of seed formation. Disabling this gene by means of a new breeding methods (CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing) brings about increased yields in rice and oilseed rape (see, below, -From rice to barley-). International collaboration Researchers from Freie Universität Berlin have observed that barley possess two slightly different copies of this gene. In partnership with scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), they produced barley lines where both copies were disabled.
