Paving the way towards future‐proofing our crops

Abstract

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European consumer and societal stakeholders' response to crop improvements and new plant breeding techniques

“…The CropBooster‐P options presented (Figure 1) during these workshops were crop improvement options identified via a critical review drawing on state‐of‐the‐art from the plant science community (Baekelandt et al, 2022). In collaboration with CropBooster‐P's plant science community, we classified the options under CropBooster‐P's three overarching “goals”: increasing yield (Hilty et al, 2021), nutritional quality (Scharff et al, 2021), and sustainability (Gojon et al, 2022).…”

“…We conducted three virtual workshops, two with consumer experts and one with societal stakeholders from Europe, as a part of the CropBooster‐P project (Baekelandt et al, 2022). The CropBooster‐P project aims to develop a roadmap for introducing new crop varieties in current agricultural practice by aligning the development of these crops with the needs, concerns, wishes, and expectations of society.…”

“…These NPBTs were extracted from the critical review drawing on state-of-the-art (Baekelandt et al, 2022). We categorised these NPBTs with help from the CropBooster-P's plant scientist community into two main themes (i) F I G U R E 1 CropBooster-P goals and options used in the workshops techniques for selecting plants and (ii) techniques for creating a new plant, as shown in Figure 2.…”

“…Ongoing efforts have explored the role of NPBTs in future‐proofing the agri‐food sector. Several recent publications discuss the role NPBTs play in improving crop traits (Baekelandt et al, 2022), extreme scenarios of future agri‐food systems (Cornelissen et al, 2021), and agri‐food system stakeholder's responses to crop improvement strategies (Stetkiewicz et al, 2022b). There is also some information on consumers' responses to GMOs (Aleksejeva, 2014; Delwaide et al, 2015; European Commission Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, 2020; European Food Safety Authority, 2019; Scientific Foresight Unit, 2021; Luck et al, 2015; Nielsen & Anderson, 2001; Popek & Halagarda, 2017; Scholderer, 2005).…”

CropBooster‐P: Towards a roadmap for plant research to future‐proof crops in Europe

“…In addition, uncertainties were identified and clustered around three themes: the need for adaptation, the priorities in the value chain, and the role of science. This analysis resulted in four contrasting scenarios for Europe's food and bioeconomy future, which will be taken into account when generating the roadmap: ‘ Bio‐Innovation ’, ‘ My Choice ’, ‘ Food Emergency ’ and ‘ REJECTech ’ (Baekelandt et al, 2022; Cornelissen et al, 2021) (Figure 3). The four possible future scenarios that have been developed were used more downstream in the CropBooster‐P project (Baekelandt et al, 2022; Cornelissen et al, 2021) and were taken into account when generating the roadmap.…”