<p>In our IHP part we tell how we integrated the ideas from the interactions with stakeholders. You can read about each interview and what we learned from it in <strong>Stakeholders we talked to</strong>.</p>
<divclass="h2">Safety/Environmental impact</div>
<divclass="h2">Ownership and IP, accessibility/ Or Social Impact</div>
<p>We prioritised the value environmental safety in our product design. First it must be noted that a GM nitrogen-fixing crop engineered with our idea wouldn’t be possible to cultivate in the Netherlands or Europe according to the current legislation. This we discuss in more detail at the legislation part. Even for field trial experiments it could be hard to get a permit. Regardless we wanted to know more what environmental safety measures we would need to think of or implement in case we would have our technology ready for testing. We would be obliged to conduct an environmental risk assessment if we aim for commercialisation of our product on the market.</p>
<p>What we learned from the interviews with <strong> RIVM </strong> and <strong>Max van Hooren </strong> from COGEM that environmental safety – including containment measures for field trials – of GM crops or plants is very case dependant. It is important to know what plant in which environmental conditions we would want to grow. This is relevant for two main reasons; one is the <strong>crossing </strong>of our GM <strong>crop with native species </strong> therefore spreading the genetic information, the other is the <strong>spreading of our GM crop in the environment </strong>. In the light of these two aspects, we had to think of the target country and location. Originally, we were thinking of the Netherlands where there are relatively harsher winters so for example corn couldn’t possibly survive them so spreading wouldn’t be a problem, nor cross pollination neither because there aren’t many relative species native to the Netherlands. However, rapeseed would be a poor choice for example because it is widely cultivated in the Netherlands and there are native species as well.</p>
<p>Additionally for a market application we need to characterize all genes and inserts in our final GM plant and examine the genetic information surrounding the inserted genes. For this we should look at <strong>bioinformatics </strong> (like <strong> blasting </strong>) for toxicity and also compare if the plant would perform or be similar to the wild type. At the same time, we should look for possible mutations in the gene and around the gene so that we know if any unwanted characteristics appear</p>
<p>When talking about the spreading of our GM plant in the native environment, the main reason could be the <strong> competitive advantage of our plant compared to the wild type species </strong>, as Max van Hooren highlighted. There is good reason that a plant that can efficiently assimilate nitrogen from the air and is independent from the nitrogen assimilation in the soil by bacteria can outcompete those that don’t have this trait.[] We thought this could be especially relevant in regions where the soil has poor nitrogen content. This carries a risk that our GM plant becomes invasive and can cause the extinction of native species thus would disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. [] However, if we work with crops, this aspect could be less relevant because crops usually require extra nutrients, pesticides, and herbicides compared to wild relatives. </p>
<p>For the other aspect – which was the spread of the genetic information of our GM crop – it is important because wild type species could acquire the foreign genes []. Counterargument could be that this could happen naturally as well [] but we are directly introducing a trait that normally could require millions of years of evolution. This could happen by <strong> gene transfer </strong> or <strong>cross breading </strong> by pollination. Gene transfer between plants happens very scarcely.[9] Cross pollination would have a bigger chance then horizontal gene transfer therefore potentially a bigger risk. We discussed with Max van Hooren that if the nitroplast would be successfully incorporated as an organelle, probably the pollen would not contain it so the nitroplast itself wouldn’t spread by pollination thus nor the nitrogen-fixing trait. However, if the host organism itself also has inserted genes to have the ability to incorporate the nitroplast, then these inserted genes would still be transferred by the pollen to native relatives.</p>
<p>So, the conclusion we came to is that for containment measures regarding the design of our GM plant, it best would be that 1) <strong>the host doesn’t have foreign genes inserted that could spread with the pollen </strong>. Then the organelle being transferred by pollination introduced wouldn’t be a concern 2) <strong>the organelle wouldn’t survive on its own </strong>. This could mean that it is dependent on the host so it cannot be transferred easily. This is inherent to our original design. Additionally, we could test the spreading of genes by cross pollination with <strong>direct crossing experiments between the wild type plant and our GM crop </strong>. </p>
<p>Another safety measurement option is either a genetic modification added so that the <strong> seeds are not viable </strong> or make a <strong>hybrid seed </strong>, so the resulting plant is infertile. These methods haves been applied before by companies like Monsanto and raised many ethical questions most mostly due to their commercial model. [10]</p>
<p>When we were thinking about uncertainties related to GMOs, we were told by RIVM that the EU directive … [] requires that risks are reassessed every 10 years after a product is on the market, this means <strong>monitoring of the cultivated GM crop </strong> to check unforeseeable affects must be applied. To have more meaningful data and to be able to track the spread of the genetic material of our GM crop we thought to engineer a marker into our host plant and our nitroplast. This could be important also for traceability of our GM crop in the food chain. []</p>
<divclass="h2">Ownership and IP, accessibility/ Or Social Impact</div>
<divclass="h2">Legislation and regulations in the European Union</div>
