Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Gene editing is a new plant breeding method of precise elegance. It will be a unique chance to create new crops, adapted to climate change, be more productive and building new sustainable resistance against the steadily growing and adapting crop pests. It will also help to shift modern agriculture to a more ecological production, in short: it is the future of modern agriculture. Opposition against the new breeding methods is often based on fundamentalist arguments which are not really built on science. Anti-GM literature is often full of questionable statistics and fake arguments. This is a great pity, since stigmatization of the new gene editing is unfortunately built on the easy going psychology of fear of fake risks, often welcomed by a society in rich countries, where the population desperately longs for new risk fights in a clearly growing safety of personal life. It would be much better to develop a constructive attitude, which could manifest in organo-transgenic agricultural strategies, where the best sides of organic farming and modern breeding built on gene editing could be combined without the ideological and commercial hurdles.

Biography

Klaus Ammann, Emeritus Prof. Hon. from the Bern University, Switzerland. Prof. Emeritus Hon. Bern University Switzerland. Thesis: vegetation and glacier history, summa cum laude in 1972 Bern University. Research topics: Biodiversity, Vegetation Ecology, Lichens and Mosses, Biomonitoring of Air Pollution, Plant Biotechnology: Biosafety, Gene Flow and Ecology of Transgenic Crops. Guest lecturing in Delft, Netherlands, Istanbul, Turkey, research in Jamaica, at Duke University and Missouri Botanical Garden. Member of the steering committee of www.prri.net. Scientific activities: maintaining 650 endnote reference bibliographies on plant biotechnology and biodiversity, over 320 publications under Klaus Ammann in journals, blogs, newspapers, books on biosafety research and ca. 210 slide presentations, many literature references with full text links. Editor, Co-Editor in journals from Elsevier, Springer and Landes. Member of scientific committees in Switzerland and Europe on biodiversity and biosafety. Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, external member of the European Academy.

E-mail: klaus.ammann@ips.unibe.ch