Switzerland’s two-decade moratorium on genetically modified crops has made its citizens wary of any attempt to grow such plants, but genetically edited varieties are slowly taking root on Swiss soil. Just a stone’s throw from a sleepy suburban neighbourhood outside Zurich, barley is being grown under high security. Because this is no ordinary barley – it’s a gene-edited variety that’s pitting science and the need to boost food production against opponents of genetically engineered crops. The Golden Promise variety is the star of the first ever field trial in Switzerland of a crop whose genes have been edited using CRISPR/Cas9 “genetic scissors” technology. The technique, which won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020 for the two scientists who discovered it, allows breeders to delete, add or replace specific genetic information in a plant that’s linked to certain desirable or undesirable traits. For example, scientists can identify a sequence in a crop’s DNA that makes it ...
