Gaining Acceptance of Novel Plant Breeding Technologies

Ensuring the sustainability of agriculture under climate change has led to a surge in alternative strategies for crop improvement. Advances in integrated crop breeding, social acceptance, and farm-level adoption are crucial to address future challenges to food security. Societal acceptance can be slow when consumers do not see the need for innovation or immediate benefits. We consider how best to address the issue of social licence and harmonised governance for novel gene technologies in plant breeding. In addition, we highlight optimised breeding strategies that will enable long-term genetic gains to be achieved. Promoted by harmonised global policy change, innovative plant breeding can realise high and sustainable productivity together with enhanced nutritional traits. Current agricultural practices are unsustainable. Moreover, an enhanced ability to adapt to changing climates, enabling expansion of cultivation and yield resilience, is required to maintain and increase crop productivity.Significant advances in genome editing can lead to improved crop resilience, but such technologies have been met with resistance from society and governments.Similarly, advances in plant breeding have been relatively slow, lacking the novel and transformative innovations that have been achieved in basic plant science. The gap between advances in basic plant science and acceptance of genome editing innovations by society is large and unyielding. We highlight the problems and offer potential solutions.