During For Plants_Intelligence symposium, Mesh Festival, HGK, Basel. 18.10.2024.
Interview is part of the research project Flower as Antenna (Chapter 2) by Rasa Smite. This chapter examines human–plant co-evolution through organic breeding at FiBL, focusing on the development of resilient white lupin varieties for sustainable, plant-based agriculture.
More info: Chapter 2 – Capacity for Survival: Human–Plant Co-Evolution. White Lupin Breeding Project
Published (shortened version, German translation): Unter Pflanzen magazine (2025)
RS:
As an organic plant breeding researcher at FiBL, with an appreciation of the dignity of plants and a clear understanding of the limits of breeding and modification, could you explain how these limits are defined at the cellular level, and what happens to heavily modified plants—such as genetically engineered soy—in terms of their ability to regenerate and reproduce?
MM:
In organic plant breeding, there’s been a discussion about what you can do in plant breeding and whether there are any limits. For organic plant breeding, there are limits, and these limits are mainly decided by ethical considerations. One of those considerations is about respecting the plant, the integrity of the plant. It was said, okay, there should be some limits.
Since plants are built on a modular level, with all the different cells, and with a single cell, the plant can reproduce. This was defined as the lowest level, the point where it was agreed there should be limits. When you do genetic engineering, for example, you introduce nucleotides that you’ve produced in the lab—artificial sequences. Then you put them back into the plant. But to do that, you’re not only introducing something below the cell level, but you also have to, for example, remove the cell wall to get it into the plant. Then, you need to rebuild the plant, and you need a lot of chemicals and other things to make that happen.
Or, if you have different species—species that wouldn’t normally cross—you can force them to cross by removing the cell wall. Then, by applying something like electrical power, the cells fuse, and they create a hybrid cell, which becomes more or less a new species. But in organic agriculture, it was agreed that we should really respect crossing barriers. If plants can’t cross-pollinate naturally, we shouldn’t force them to do so.
And with genetic engineering, it was said, yeah, you shouldn’t really introduce external DNA into the plant, especially considering that the plant is much more than just the sum of its individual genes and nucleotides. We also believe that, based on evolution, there’s a delicate balance between the genes in the plant. For example, in the mitochondria or the chloroplasts, there’s this balance between all the different genes and how they interact with each other.
At the moment, while we’ve already sequenced plants, we still don’t fully understand how gene regulation works in detail. There are many feedback loops, and there’s also a huge amount of nucleotides in the DNA that we don’t yet know the function of. For instance, the wheat plant has a much larger genome than humans, so we think we still don’t know enough to go beyond natural cross-pollination, which typically happens to create new genetic diversity.
There was a definition made by organic plant breeders, and as I showed in the presentation, there’s also been some discussion about the dignity of creatures, which is part of the Swiss Constitution. This led to debates, like the Rhino R-physis 1 and Rhino R-physis 2 debates, about what it means for a plant to have rights and dignity, especially in the context of plant breeding.
So, in organic plant breeding, we want to make sure we respect these boundaries. Of course, we have goals—we want a harvest, we want the plant to develop resistance to pests and diseases, and we want it to adapt to climate change—but we want to do this within the natural limits. So we really want to stay within the limits of nature with this cross-pollination.
RS:
How do you see the role of humans today shaping the evolution of crop plants? What forms of collaboration exist in nature?
MM;
I think we are at a very critical point in time because, on one hand, we know we need to make our food systems more sustainable. We know that the world population is still growing and needs to be fed. We also know that our resources are limited, and that’s why something has to change. We’ve also seen that industrialized agriculture has drawbacks, which have now been scientifically proven.
With the invention of genetic engineering, plant breeding has shifted its focus.
Beforehand, plant breeding was seen as a long-term process, often a family business. You would think in terms of 20, 30, or even 50 years—a long time span. But now, with genes being patented and owned by companies that used to sell chemicals, or still do, it's become like a chemical entity that you can protect with a patent. You then sell the use of this patent, and that makes plant breeding quite different.
In the past, there was the idea that many plant breeders could use the cultivars developed by others, allowing everyone to benefit from the progress made. But that’s no longer the case when a gene is patented. The patent holder can decide who has the right to use the gene or plant for further breeding, and we’re seeing that this has a big impact on increasing concentration in the seed market. We're very concerned that this concentration is making farmers more dependent, and we also see that, as this continues, agrodiversity is shrinking. That’s why we fear we might even lose certain plant varieties.
For example, we currently have a project in Chad and Niger where we wanted to support neglected crops—local crops that were once important staples but are now diminishing. There hasn’t been much breeding activity for these crops, and we started by collecting landraces from farmers. However, we had to realize that in some countries, there are no more landraces available because they’ve already been lost. Landraces are like cultivars that farmers have maintained over time. The farmers would start with their own seeds and then reuse them, so the crops were really adapted to their local conditions and were kind of in the ownership of the farmers.
We’ve come to understand that a lot of this genetic diversity may be gone. Even though gene banks have been collecting genetic resources since the time of Vavilov, most of these collections were focused on cereals.
There's hardly any seed available for vegetables, and some vegetable seeds and other important plants cannot be stored as long as cereals. For cereals, you can store them for 20 to 30 years in cold conditions, but for vegetables, they may only be viable for about two years. For fruit trees, you need to store them as living organisms because the seeds are different from the original plants. This requires in vitro culture, along with cryopreservation, where you use glycerol stocks to freeze them and then later unfreeze them.
However, all these gene banks have primarily concentrated on cereals, and we are still lacking genetic resources for other crop species. This raises concerns that we may have already lost some of these resources because they weren't collected in time and have not been a focus in the past. Historically, the emphasis was on collecting cereals to ensure a sufficient caloric supply, but only recently has there been a growing recognition that we need vitamins for a balanced diet.
In genetic engineering, for instance, there's a trend to take rice and engineer it to contain vitamin A, so you wouldn't need to consume carrots for that nutrient—you could just eat rice and get your vitamins. From an organic perspective, however, we believe it's essential to have a diverse range of crops in the field, as this is important for healthy crop rotation and healthy soil.
But we also want to have many crops to ensure a diversified diet, so we don't want to face a de-fortification where genetically engineered genes are added, or where just some vitamins are included in the food. We truly believe that nature has already provided everything we need; we just need to use it wisely.
RS:
Do you think organic plant breeding alone could sustain global food production? Is it realistic to replace conventional methods?
MM:
I think if we produce food organically, it is possible, but we would need to ensure that we are genuinely producing food and not merely feed. In organic agriculture, when you examine it on an area basis, certain crops do experience yield reductions compared to conventional methods. However, the positive side of organic agriculture is that it promotes much higher biodiversity and is much closer to nature compared to more industrialized agriculture.
The trade-off in yield can only be compensated if we eat less meat and also reduce our food waste. One-third of the food produced is thrown away, which could be a primary area to address. The biggest problem in feeding the world right now is not so much about production, as we are producing sufficient food, but rather about access to that food.
There are numerous crises, wars, and conflicts between nations or tribes that hinder everyone from having enough food at the moment. I suspect that the same struggles we currently face over food will evolve into battles over water in the future.
I think that in organic agriculture, we also have higher soil fertility, which means that rainwater can be retained better, reducing the need for irrigation. This will become increasingly important as our groundwater and freshwater resources are limited. I believe we could feed the world by developing varieties that thrive under organic conditions, but we would need much more funding and resources to effectively pursue organic breeding for all the different crops.
At the moment, the number of hectares dedicated to organic farming is still quite small. Additionally, the business model for organic breeding does not operate in the same way as with large companies. These big companies focus on major crops like soybeans and maize, and for each bag of seed sold, they receive a kind of royalty. This system only works if you have large areas planted with your own variety, allowing you to earn significant revenue. With that income, you can then reinvest in further development.
