<p>The identified/relevant values were food security, accessibility, social/environmental sustainability, safety. The value hierarchy of the two most important values safety and accessibility can be seen in Figure 4 and Figure 5 as an example.</p>
<p>Safety was found to be an important value for the European Union but also to the Dutch Government and the public. Safety can be divided into environmental and food safety. During our HP work we mostly dived deeper into the question of environmental safety related to our idea. Figure 3 shows how norms such as ‘No risk for the environment derives from the value safety and what are the certain design requirements such as ‘the genetically modified (GM) plant shouldn’t outcompete native species’ to satisfy those norms in our design. We later rediscussed these design requirements and modified them according to the information we gathered from interviews we conducted. Making design choices related to safety were difficult. The design requirements for safety often clashed with the ones derived from accessibility. This is discussed later.</p>
<p>Accessibility was an important value identified related to farmers and NGOs. NGOs like Greenpeace argue that the Agro and Seed industries main priority is profit (by patents and seeds that need to be rebought every year) rather than to make their technology and products accessible for all farmers and serve their local needs.[8] The design requirements shown in Figure 4 are interesting ones related to patenting and ownership, but also touching the core of our whole design. Other important questions for farmers are how expensive the GM seeds are. Is it affordable or cheaper compared to the non-GM type that needs fertilizer? Will the farmers have to buy the seeds every year? These questions related to accessibility touch the question of ownership and safety which are discussed in the IHP part.</p>
<p>See what design adjustments we made regarding these questions after interviews.</p>
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<p>We had the opportunity (with the kind help of TU Delft AgTech Institute) to have a critical discussion with four scientists from KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA about our idea and experimental approach. KWS is an international seed company. We thought it is relevant to talk about the feasibility of our idea and approach with experienced scientist from a company that is relevant to seed development.</p>
<p>During our talk with the scientists we discussed additional aspects that are important to test for our idea in the early phases. Therefore, we included additional experiments and approaches for the fusion experiments but also for characterising our uTP peptide. More details can be found on the Future wet-lab experiments page. Additionally, they raised their concerns about the feasibility of our idea. They highlighted that it is important to think of alternative approaches and how our idea could compliment already existing solutions for improving nitrogen-fixation in plants. Reflecting to this we discuss these possibilities under Alternative approaches. </p>
<p>Martijn Schaap is a Professor at Freie Universitaet Berlin on Air Quality and Principal Scientist at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research ( TNO ). TNO is an independent research organisation that aims to create innovations while collaborating closely with governments, universities and the private sector. [TNO website]</p>
<p>Since Martijn is an expert on reactive nitrogen emissions and deposition we could learn more about the situation in the Netherlands, what are the main sources of ammonia and nitrogen oxide emissions. Since he is a researcher at TNO which is a Dutch organisation, we learned how the Dutch government approaches the problem. He also gave his opinion on ideas that could help solve the problem, these are also discussed in the alternative approaches part.
<p>We wanted to implement the notion of responsible innovation during our project. That is why we contacted dr. Zoë Robaey who is currently an Assistant Professor in Ethics of Technology at the Philosophy Group of Wageningen University. Her work investigates moral responsibility under conditions of uncertainty in the field of biotechnology in agriculture.
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<p>We learned that it is not enough to have a potentially revolutionary idea that we think could do good. It is a fundamental part of being responsible that we think of how our idea or product will be used in society, who will own it, what exact problems our innovation will solve and what consequences can be anticipated to different choices. We developed our idea and thought of its application with this mindset all along.</p>
<p>As a result of our discussion, we came up with different types of responsible ownership models that could be applied to our project and what benefits each could have. Also, we thought more about our final product, do we want to create GM seeds in the end with specific crops, or just have a ‘nitrogen-fixing traits’ that could be used as a technology by others. You can see more on the ownership page and Entrepreneurship page about how we imagine our final idea.</p>
<divclass="h3">National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM)</div>
<p>During our interview with the RIVM GMO office, we learned about environmental risk assessment and what are the steps for commercializing a GM crop in the EU and the Netherlands. Our main question was what the relevant aspects in the assessment of field trials are and how we can mitigate potential risks connected to our GM plant. We learned that risks and containment measures depend on the characteristics of the GMO and the environment it is grown in and are therefore case specific. So, choosing a plant is essential for specific details. A bioinformatics blasting module was discussed to assess safety better.
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<p>We followed up our RIVM discussion about environmental safety by reaching out to Max van Hooren to get more specific information on safety related to our design. He is a member of the scientific secretariat of The Netherlands Commission on Genetic Modification (COGEM). COGEM is an advisory board that provides advice on work involving genetically modified organisms. </p>
<p>We discussed the environmental safety aspects in more detail such as competitive advantage and genes spreading via seeds. Also, important question was, what design would be best; to genetically engineer the host or not or the question of not making the organelle viable on its own.</p>
<p>Amrit Nanda is the Executive Manager of Plants for the Future ETP which is a Non-profit membership-based organization bringing together academia, industry and farming communities to promote the flow of innovation to market in the plant sector. She helped us learn more about GMO legislation in Europe and what possible changes could be proposed to promote the implementation of synthetic biology ideas like ours. We also talked about how important science communication is for the acceptance of GMOs in the public.</p>
