The fence bounds twenty-eight square meters of bare land in the middle of the Lombard countryside. Inside it a dozen researchers from the University of Milan are busy. The laptop resting on the ground shows the layout of the plots. A meter is unrolled to mark the coordinates on the ground.  Yellow tags are ready to be stuck into the clods: the inscription TEA (the Italian equivalent of New Genomic Techniques is “Assisted Evolution Techniques”) is used to mark rice that has been genetically edited for resistance to a fungal disease (rice blast), while the abbreviation WT indicates wild-type plants, which have not been modified and serve as a control group.

They are two hundred of one kind plus two hundred of the other, so far they had been growing safely inside a climate-controlled cell and it is finally time to move them outdoors. The soil, however, has dried out too much, due to the sun of the last few days. “Hoes, we need hoes,” says Vittoria Brambilla, who along with Fabio Fornara is the architect of the experiment. “And watering cans,” adds Roberto Defez, a biotechnologist who arrived from Naples to help out. Then we hope for rain; the first week of outdoor life is the most delicate.

In the future it will seem like a scene of ordinary research in Italy, at least that is the wish. But in the present, what took place on May 13, 2024 was a special event. Unusual and significant enough to have brought all the way to Mezzana Bigli (in the property made available by a private entrepreneur with the help of the Bussolera Branca Foundation) a small crowd of friends of biotechnology, including scientist-senator Elena Cattaneo and Marco Cappato of the World Congress for Freedom of Scientific Research. They came here to celebrate the start of the first field trial with genetically edited plants in Italy.

The European regulation on New Genomic Techniques has not yet been adopted: after its approval in plenary in Strasbourg on February 7 this year, the triangulation between the EU Parliament, Council and Commission is set to resume in the next legislature. Therefore, the old rules governing experimental releases of GMOs continue to apply even for plants that contain no foreign genes and have only a few point mutations, which with much luck could have occurred in nature by spontaneous mutagenesis. Therefore, even for Brambilla and Fornara’s rice, which has three genes deactivated (Pi21, HMA1 and HMA2) thanks the use of CRISPR genetic scissors and no transgenes.

For two decades, no research group in Italy had dared to seek permission to test in realistic conditions (thus in the field) any laboratory-modified plant (the last application for a GMO was in 2004 and was rejected). In the meantime, technology has evolved and a growing number of political, economic and social actors have softened their opposition to genetic innovation, at least in cases where transgenes are not involved. As a consequence a paragraph inserted in a drought decree a year ago recognized the importance of preparing Italian agriculture to the challenge of climate change also with the help of new biotech tools, breaking the deadlock.

Submitting a notification, however, remains a considerable effort, due to the amount of data that must be submitted to the Ministry of the Environment in order to prove that even the most remote risks to flora, fauna, target and non-target microorganisms are virtually zeroed out. “Give CRISPR a chance,” is written on the T-shirt of a researcher working inside the fenced-in field, which looks like a cage but represents a window for research freedom, provided that this is only the beginning. One trial does not make a summer, and a one-year field is not enough to collect scientifically sound data. For the success of Brambilla and colleagues to be more than just symbolic, therefore, the deadline of the decree will have to be extended well beyond Dec. 31, 2024, until new European rules are approved.

In November, we will know if the trial went well for the edited rice that has been renamed Ris8imo (it’s read risottimo, combining the words risotto and excellent), but in the meantime, a second experimentation could begin. The Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of Agricultural Economics, funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, announced on May 13 that they have filed a notification to test a tomato resistant to a parasitic plant. Then it could be grapevine’s turn, argues Mario Pezzotti of the University of Verona, but before proceeding with a multi-year crop it will be necessary to be sure of stable support from institutions and a long enough time horizon.

(Text translated from Scienza in Rete; photo credit: Associazione Luca Coscioni)