For over a decade, Vittoria Brambilla has been trying to improve crops’ quality, yields, and nutritional value. But the botany researcher at the University of Milan feared her studies might never see the light of day. Her initial problems were not scientific but political.
Italian farmers had long sought a variety of short-grained arborio rice that was resistant to blast, a devastating fungal plant pathogen that destroys enough rice globally to feed 60 million people each year. After years of work, Brambilla used CRISPR to create a new blast-resistant arborio rice variety called RIS8imo….
[However,] the Italian Parliament’s strict interpretation of 2003 European Union rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) meant that Brambilla couldn’t conduct any field studies of her new rice.
In 2023, after intense lobbying by farmers and scientists alike, the Italian government changed its law. Brambilla’s trial could go forward. The University of Milan scientists planted the rice earlier [in 2024], but protesters struck overnight, ripping all the plants out of the ground. For Brambilla, it was a stark reminder that policy changes around genetically modified crops, including those altered with new genomic techniques (NGTs) like CRISPR, don’t guarantee the public’s acceptance.
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