Future-Proofing Crops: Can Gene Editing Tackle Food Security?

Better Agriculture Needed

As our civilization faces the conjunction of rising population and climate instability, the question of food security is rising back to the forefront of the important issues to tackle. Adding to this risk, many others are adding to the list, making the issue even more sensitive, like the ongoing damage to biodiversity and species extinctions, pollution, erosion of fertile soil, urbanization of arable lands, etc.

As a result, massive pressure is building on agronomists and plant scientists to provide solutions that ideally would manage all at once to provide carbon sequestration, increased food production, and reduced impact on arable lands.

“If we don’t get this right, I actually don’t think anything else really, really matters”

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Global Solutions for Food Security Event in New York in September 2023

One of the most promising tools is genetic engineering, but it has a different focus than previous crop gene editing. While the previous focus has been on pushing for higher yields at any cost and in tandem with heavy chemical inputs, more advanced methods could combine higher production with more sustainable results as well.

This is the argument developed by Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and plant biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in a publication¹ titled “Needs and opportunities to future-proof crops and the use of crop systems to mitigate atmospheric change”.

A Changing Planet

A Bleak Picture?

Before discussing how to adapt, we need to understand what is changing, and the picture is extremely complex. Global warming is expected to not only change the average conditions, making some areas more fertile and some less, but also to increase the frequency and severity of extreme events.

This includes extreme temperature, drought, flooding, and surface ozone levels, all of which can dramatically impact crop yield, even more so than an overall change of average condition, for which a change of agricultural methods could be enough.

Atmospheric CO2 reached 427 p.p.m. in 2024 and is projected to be approximately 600 p.p.m. by 2050−2060. In such a scenario, the global average temperature could rise another 1.2°C by 2050−60, up to 2.7°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

Regarding food, the world will need between 35 and 56% more food by 2050, due to an increase in consumption per capita, a growing population, and increased waste of food production as more people move to cities.

When combined with the expected crop losses from extreme events and shifts in climate, this roughly translates to needing to almost double global food production by 2050.

Not All Bad News

However, the rising CO2 behind climate change has a positive effect: it stimulates plant growth. In fact, increased CO2 concentrations are routinely used in greenhouses to boost yields.

“Modern elite cultivars of rice and soybean showing yield increases of approximately 30% with elevation of CO2 to anticipated 2050−60 levels.

C4 crops—maize and sorghum—do not show a yield increase, since they are already CO2-saturated at today’s already elevated levels”

It is especially true for plants with C3 metabolism, which include most non-tropical crops, and make a large amount of the world’s staple crops (C4 plants have a different metabolism, which concentrates CO2 in the leaf before photosynthesis, so it makes sense that the ambient c02 levels are less relevant for them).

Source: GforG

Another good news is that doubling crop yields is not only possible, it is already done, at least for some specific crops.

For example, massive R&D investments by agricultural corporations have already doubled the yield of corn, while other staple crops, like rice, wheat, potatoes, and sorghum (important in Africa and tropical regions) have lagged behind.

Source: Royal Society Publishing

Dealing With Agricultural Problems

Low Altitude Ozone

Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a secondary pollutant formed by the action of sunlight on volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides in polluted air masses.

Today, levels of >100 ppb can be frequently found in rural areas of the US corn belt, with significantly higher levels in the major crop production areas of China and India.

“Ozone already generate 5% losses for soybean and approximately 10% for maize in the USA, costing some $9 billion annually. In total, this could result in up to 10% loss of global crops. “

Genetic modification on the plant anatomy, especially the stomata (spot letting air enter the leaves) could reduce ozone penetration and damage. As CO2 concentration increases, less open stomata should not drastically impact photosynthesis efficiency.

Source: ScienceFacts

Boosting the production of antioxidants in the plant could also help to reduce the oxidation by ozone molecules, and help improve overall plant resistance to stress.

Drought And Water Use

Higher temperature and more extreme weather is expected to be associated with more water shortages.

By 2050, global yield losses to drought in maize are projected to rise to 21.3% from a previous average of 12.0% for the period 1961–2006, and for wheat from 9.6% to 15.5%.

The proportion of regions that are drought-affected will rise most in Africa and Oceania, from the present 22% and 15%, respectively, to 59% and 58% by the end of the century.

Here too, lower stomata opening could help reduce water requirements in plants, and reduce stress during droughts.

“The result was a 15% improvement in leaf-level water-use efficiency in field-grown tobacco and a 30% decrease in whole plant water use. Because of the high speed with which it can be genetically modified, tobacco is often used as a test bed for studying alterations that can be used in a variety of other plants.

Genetic engineering like the introduction of Bacillus subtilis cold shock protein B (cspB) into the plant can improve resistance to drought but has not been translated to commercial applications yet.

Boosting Carbon Sequestration

Ultimately, plants are machines turning water, CO2, and sunlight into organic matter. Only 50% of the biomass of crops is harvested, and the rest is left in the form of stalks or roots.

If this organic matter could stay in the soil, instead of decomposing in a few years, it would increase the net terrestrial carbon sink by 50%.

Deeper roots combined with no-till farming methods might be the answer, with several mechanisms activating at once when stronger root systems are engineered, either through genetic manipulation or dedicated breeding programs:

• Improving the soil quality and its capacity to retain water.
• Improving the plant’s resistance to drought, keeping carbon absorption higher at all times.

Changing the cell wall composition, with more lignin and more long carbon molecules, could also make the resulting dead organic matter a lot more resistant to decomposition, trapping carbon underground for decades, or even centuries and longer.

Lastly, an even more proactive approach could be taken, with the goal of directly “farming” and trapping carbon at an industrial scale. Scientists have identified high-productivity C4 perennial grasses like Miscanthus × giganteus or switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata), which can trap up to 130 tons of CO2 per hectare in one year, or maybe even more for some varieties.

Using BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), this biomass could be burnt to generate electricity, and the resulting CO2 is captured and transferred to deep underground storage.

Source: Penn State University

Making Appropriate Regulations

Navigating Contradictions

An issue with the mass-scale deployment of such modified crops able to either grow yield in the face of climate change, or even contribute to mitigating it, is that it will certainly require the use of GMO crops.

In that context, the reluctance of major regions to use such crops can be a big hindrance to any biotech-driven solutions to climate change and food scarcity.

This is especially true for the EU, which often outright bans GMO crops. But other regions also tend to fully ban GMOs from organic labels, despite having strict targets to increase the portion of their agriculture falling under the organic label.

So in the current legislative context, protecting the environment with more organic farming could mean harming the environment by missing improved yields and increasing carbon capture.

This was a topic of a publication in the prestigious scientific magazine Cell² titled “New genomic techniques in organic production: Considerations for science-based, effective, and acceptable EU regulation”.

CRISPR and Other New Genomic Techniques (NGTs)

A key issue is to distinguish new genomic techniques (NGTs) from the older, more crude methods previously used to create GMOs.

This much more controlled and precise method of genetic engineering includes CRISPR-Cas9, site-directed nuclease technology (SDN), oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis (ODM), and RNA-dependent DNA methylation (RdDm).

Contrary to inserting a foreign gene in a plant, NGT can either create a targeted mutation that could have naturally occurred or insert material from a plant that could have naturally crossed with the target crop.

“Organic agriculture can play an important role in the transition to more sustainable food systems,

A greater focus on efficiency and resilience can be achieved by introducing a greater diversity of crops, the development of which can be facilitated and accelerated by NGTs.”

So while not fully “natural”, NGTs also do not create something new that could have never occurred spontaneously, and instead just “guide the hand of nature”.

Proponents of this position hold that it is necessary to understand the nature of NGTs and to make nuanced distinctions between the technologies under consideration (GMOs versus NGTs).

Can Organic Labels Adapt to NGTs?

A big reason why regulators and the public have both been reluctant to accept even “natural” NGTs into the organic label is that it could mostly damage this label perception.

Instead, the paper authors propose to create labeled schemes “organic + NGT” that make it clear it is not just the “classical organic” farming scheme, but also not the usual GMOs either.

If organic agriculture is a promoted type of agricultural production in the EU, all forms of organic production (including NGT+) would need to be accepted when evaluating the reach of the organic targets in the EU.

This could open the way to a wider spread of organic cultivation methods, without sacrificing yields. Especially as organic labels go far beyond just the plant variety, but also the cultivation methods like pesticide & herbicide uses, plowing and planting methods, etc.

Final Thoughts on Gene Editing and Agricultural Resilience

Changing climatic conditions and more demand for food are both a major risk and a major opportunity.

On one hand, it could cause tremendous human suffering and ecological damage. On the other hand, it could be the impulse that encourages us to create better and more sustainable forms of agriculture.

This will likely pass by some modification of our crops’ genetics, the way it has been since the beginning of agriculture.

New genomics techniques can now use the wealth of genomic data accumulated in the past decades to create more resilient and productive plants.

Meanwhile, our regulations and perception of genetic engineering need to evolve as well. The ultimate goal of protecting the environment will need to overcome preconceptions about GMOs created when genetic engineering was still relatively primitive.

This is not to say that uncontrolled modification of our biosphere should go rampant, but that a more open and careful approach leveraging all available new tools could provide the best possible results while mitigating most risks.

Plant Genetic Engineering Innovator

Corteva

Corteva is a global leader in farming technology, especially chemicals and seeds. It is also very active in new farming technology like robotics.

With $17.2B in net sales in 2023, 22,500+ employees, and 10,000,000+ customers, the company is among the largest in its sector, together with out of the US competitors Bayer and Syngenta.

Overall, and maybe reflective of a deeper trend of reduced consumption and increased competition, the sales for chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, etc.) have been down in 2024, while seed sales grew.

Source: Corteva

In a deeper look, the core business of Corteva in seed is in corn and soybean, making up the bulk of the company revenue in this segment. Most notably, Corteva’s “Enlist E3” soybean, with resistance to 3 herbicides (2,4-D choline, glyphosate, and glufosinate), has grown from below 5% in 2019 to make up >65% of the US market.

In crop protection/chemical, more than half of the sales were for herbicides, with the rest mostly composed of insecticides and fungicides.

Corteva has built its current business around traditional industrial farming, which is still a very profitable activity that sustains the current R&D budget.

However, as we discussed here and in a previous “Future of farming” article, new possibilities are opening, with Corteva leading the charge:

• Gene editing of existing crops, including using CRISPR technology.
• An innovation hub for ag-tech startups, Corteva Catalyst. “A machine learning platform is assisting in efforts to landscape the sector and identify technologies relevant to Corteva’s research priorities.”
• Biostimulants, biocontrol, and other natural-origin products like insects’ pheromones with proven and predictable performance.
• Nitrogen-fixing bacteria (BlueN™ or Utrisha™ N) to create extra chemical-free fertilizer.
• Grain bio-fortified with vitamin A for improving nutrition in poor countries.
• Walking robots for row crops.
• Experiments with the implementation of AI in farms, from fruit picking to identifying the best plants for trait selection for seed production.
• Full suite of software solutions, from land imagery data to farm management software and carbon credit monitoring and selling.

Corteva is also actively looking into the future growing demand for green biofuels and specialty proteins, each with a $10B-$30B addressable market by 2035.

Source: Corteva

So overall, while Corteva is a giant of the “old” industrial farming methods, it is also clearly aware of the changes in the sector and positioning itself to become an equally large and successful company adapted to quickly changing agricultural practices.

Latest Corteva (CTVA) Stock News and Developments

Studies Referenced

<sup>1. Long Stephen P. (2025) Needs and opportunities to future-proof crops and the use of crop systems to mitigate atmospheric change. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. 29 May 2025. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0229
2. Molitorisová, Alexandra, et al. (2025) New genomic techniques in organic production: Considerations for science-based, effective, and acceptable EU regulation. Cell Reports Sustainability, May 30, 2025. https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-sustainability/fulltext/S2949-7906(25)00101-6</sup>