Clinical research
Being tested in people in registered clinical trials. Being in trials is not evidence that a treatment works or is safe.
Simple explanation
More than half the world eats rice as a staple, so small improvements matter enormously. Editing work targets yield, resistance to bacterial blight, tolerance of drought and salt as growing conditions change, and, importantly for public health in some regions, reduced uptake of arsenic from soil.
Go deeper
Rice is a model cereal and a staple for over half the global population. Editing programmes target yield components, bacterial blight resistance via SWEET promoter modification, abiotic stress tolerance, and reduced arsenic accumulation. China has issued biosafety certificates for edited rice varieties; several national frameworks treat non-transgenic edited rice as conventional.
Sources
- Nature Plants
Genome editing in rice ↗