The development and use of plant breeding technologies can contribute to food security (Tester and Langridge, 2010; Zaidi et al., 2019). Agricultural biotechnology is part of the science of plant breeding that arguably provides solutions to world hunger (Mackey, 2003; Trivedi et al., 2017). Agricultural biotechnology is indispensable to plant breeding strategies aimed at improving abiotic stress tolerance (Varshney et al., 2011; Amin et al., 2019; Hossain et al., 2021).

However, the efforts of scientists advocating crop genetic improvement technologies have been met with public resistance to genetically modified (GM) foods and crops. Even regarded by scientists as safe, new genetic technologies come under public pressure questioning innovations on ethical and socio-economic grounds (Schurman and Kelso, 2003; Anyshchenko, 2019; Beumer, 2019). The years of debates over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been especially circulating around the ethics of cloning and combining genes from unrelated species (Rollin, 2012). It was suggested that GM debate overlooks the relevance of crop genetic improvement techniques to food security and environmental protection because we lack a broader vision of global issues (Popp et al., 2013). There are also other obstacles to the use of agricultural biotechnology in addressing the problem of climate change and food security, e.g., labelling requirements, coexistence management and intellectual property rights, including the property rights of indigenous peoples who may have cultivated landraces and selected wild relatives for centuries (Powledge, 2010).

The proximate cause of opposition to food produced from biotech crops is rooted in the complexity of socio-technical integration. Linear incorporation of biotechnological inventions into society can fail due to complex considerations involved in the matter of socio-technological integration. This possibility of failure begs the question: How to ensure that biotechnology contributes to sustainable agriculture in a safe and responsible way for the benefit of society? A hypothesis to test the research question is that new tools and methods of agricultural biotechnology as a solution to food security can ensure socially responsible scientific practise through building capacities which catalyse the endorsement of a new technology by stakeholders and its acceptance by end users.

Crop improvement is a cornerstone of global food security (Ravanbakhsh et al., 2021). Climate change sends serious challenge to global food security, exacerbating biotic and abiotic stresses that restrict plant productivity (Ul Haq et al., 2019). The threat that climate change poses to agriculture can be mitigated by using genome editing for the benefit of societies challenged by malnutrition. The use of CRISPR/Cas9 shows great promise as a powerful tool to improve plant nutrition, enhance plant disease resistance, and produce drought tolerant plants (Arora and Narula, 2017). The potential for biotechnology to contribute to sustainable agriculture is analysed trough the framework of issues and solutions sorted around socio-economic, environmental and technological aspects of the hypothesis (Table 1).

The above table demonstrates that biotechnology is placed in a broad agricultural context. Among other solutions to issues in food security, genome editing has been the most recent and one of the most contested achievements of life sciences put to the purpose of feeding the world. Genome editing has proven to be an effective solution to the limitations posed by climate change. Researchers across the world have demonstrated that genome editing helps in increasing abiotic stress tolerance, enabling salinity, and drought tolerance, and enhancing disease resistance (Karavolias et al., 2021). Despite its success in research, genome editing has not always transitioned into marketed applications. Most of technological advances in genome editing have occurred recently, and the prospects of their commercialisation has yet to be estimated. On the one hand, genome editing is a powerful mechanism of agricultural improvement capable of providing solutions to issues in food security exacerbated by climate change. On the other hand, real success of genome editing depends on factors beyond technological solutions. Social justice, economic equity, regulatory clarity are among numerous non-technological issues that will determine the future of innovation in agricultural biotechnology.

The framework for analysing the ways in which biotechnology could contribute to sustainable agriculture is not exhaustive in its parameters because new technological developments are susceptible to various estimations of their costs and benefits. The history of agriculture has shown that risks are inherent in every solution, ie reduced biodiversity in result of monoculture farming, or soil contamination due to heavy use of pesticides and herbicides. As complex as it is, gene editing is but a technology embedded into the institutional infrastructure of science within society. The dynamic policy and socio-economic entanglements need to be considered when assessing the prospects of achieving food security in a changing world.

The development of industry and technology has caused anthropogenic climate change with increasingly devastating effects that damage crops and infrastructure. Climate change, the dominant driver of biodiversity loss (Bahadur et al., 2015), has a dramatic impact on plants. For example, the grain yield of tropical wheat is predicted to decline to a notably large amount if the increase in local temperature exceeds 3°C above pre-industrial levels, regardless of adaptive measures such as planting different crops (Parry, 2007). Some scientific assessments envisage that under higher emission scenarios a global average 2°C warming threshold is likely to be crossed between 2040 and 2060 (Joshi et al., 2011).

About 2 billion people in the world experience food insecurity (FAO, 2021). Some 900 million people, primarily in developing countries, have no sufficient access to food. By 2050 the world's population is estimated to have grown to more than nine billion (Godfray et al., 2010), which will increase global food demand by 60 per cent (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012). Increase in food production will also increase the use of water and arable land areas. Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate change (Pörtner et al., In Press). There is not much prospect of meeting the nutritional needs of the world in the mid-21st century by means of current agricultural practises (Davies and Bowman, 2016). To meet the demand, food production must be improved.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ending poverty, hunger and inequality, taking action on the environment and climate change, and improving access to health and education. The need to feed the world is recognised by the UN General Assembly as a global issue: a firm intention to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture is the second goal of sustainable development. Global environmental challenges demand sustainable solutions to the issue of food security (Wichelns, 2015). Around 60 per cent of the world's ecosystems that help produce food, feed and fibre have been used unsustainably (Montanarella, 2012). The European Commission estimates that by 2050, if we continue using resources at the current rate, a better quality of life will not be achieved because we will need the equivalent of more than two planets to sustain us (European Commission, 2011).

Food crops cover about 10–11% of the world land area, animal feed crops use a further 22% of the world land area (Tzotzos et al., 2009, p. 5), and agricultural land area is approximately five billion hectares, or 38 percent of the global land area (FAO, 2021). High yields and enhanced nutritional value of crops are the cornerstones of food security (Foley et al., 2011). A technologically optimistic vision of the future suggests producing more food from less arable land area (Basiago, 1994), which will require further crop improvements. This will be unfeasible without industrial agriculture that meets the needs of growing urban populations.

Genome editing methods and techniques like CRISPR-Cas9 have been praised by scientists as revolutionary tools for efficient crop improvement (Leng et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018) that provide a solution to the problem of crop failure. However, genome editing as a technological solution requires appropriate policy strategies aimed at the integration of new technology with societal and consumer expectations. Social licence is a crucial element in the transformation of technological solutions into policy strategies that could ensure responsible innovation in the field of agricultural biotechnology. The spectrum of policy and societal responses to technological innovation are wide. The opposites of this spectrum can be illustrated by the regulatory approaches toward genome editing in the US vs. the EU. US regulatory agencies have generally recognised genome editing techniques as safe and declined to regulate crops, foods and feeds developed with developed with CRISPR/Cas9 and other genome editing techniques, while the EU regulates them the same way as conventional genetic engineering (Dederer and Hamburger, 2019). From the regulatory point of view, such a difference can be justified by risks associated with new technologies. While the argument of risks remains legitimate in policy and societal contexts, there is arguably no evidence that disproves scientific consensus on the safety of biotechnology. Stemming from the debates on potential hazards of GMOs, the policy and social acceptance of genome editing is far from being universal. New technology often falls short of entering manufacturing base due to ineffective integration with societal expectations.

The misbalance between scientific risk assessment and policy risk management suggests a specific pattern of technological development characterised by three distinct stages: research, policy design and social integration. Firstly, a new technology goes through the phase of research. During this stage, risks have been assessed by the experts directly involved in the development of technology. Research does not necessarily coincide with comprehensive risk assessment, and the criteria of risks assessment do not typically include the perception of risk.

Another stage of technological development represents policy design that develops regulatory framework for technology. Here, evidence about the safety of a technology can be contested because the data generated by research is rarely complete and accurate, which makes scientific evidence questioned. Socio-economic and ethical considerations create the need to balance policy priorities with scientific risk assessment. Affected by conflicting values, policy design shifts scientific consensus toward socio-political compromise. Research on new technologies that has secured social licence might not have any significant misbalance with policy design, but the lack of public approval can cause market failure. Research that develops products perceived as unsafe can fail in getting to the market if they do not have a proven added value. A failure in ensuring responsible innovation could arguably occur due to the linear development of socio-technological integration (Figure 1).

In response to pressing food security problems, scientists provide technological solutions to complex issues that have a significant component of social, economic, and ethical considerations. The public may not have the expertise of scientists, and risk management estimates hazards by criteria that include the perception of risk. Decision making is rarely based on scientific risk assessment only, which suggests that the linear model of socio-technical integration is unsuitable for solving complex issues because it does not engage with taking pre-emptive measures to manage risks associated with new technologies and mitigate undesirable societal implications of innovation (Genus and Stirling, 2018). It becomes apparent that genome editing as a solution to food security would be scaled-up more successfully if it was mandated under decision making that integrates social perspective with technical feasibility. New tools and methods of agricultural biotechnology as a solution to food security can ensure socially responsible scientific practise through building capacities which catalyse the endorsement of a new technology by stakeholders and its acceptance by end users. However, a suitable model to implement the solution needs to be explored further. The linear model might be efficient in providing fast solutions, but food security is too complex an issue to be reduced to simple answers. While the components of socio-technical integration, including research and development, policy strategy, and social integration are valid, it seems that a better solution lies in their mutual interrelation through a non-linear pattern (Figure 2).

Following the non-linear model of socio-technical integration, innovation is consistent with socio-economic considerations and ethical values, and new technology is implemented in a socially responsible manner (Fisher et al., 2015). Another distinct feature of this model is that societal expectations are integrated into new technology during, not after, research, which allows a greater degree of flexibility in aligning industrial products with public values (Fisher et al., 2006; Flipse et al., 2013).

Even a theoretically coherent policy model might be inconsistent in its application due to differences in regulatory frameworks between jurisdictions. The focus on social engagement implemented through a policy based on a universal design might nevertheless result in different regulatory frameworks. Sustainability is a concept that, among other global development paradigms, is probably closest to the representation of theoretical universality, but different policy strategies and regulatory frameworks may result in decision making inconsistent with theory. Experience with public opposition against crop genetic improvement suggests that decision making on genome editing and synthetic biology is bound to implement regulatory strategies with stringent controls. The socio-technical integration of innovations in the field of genome editing accommodates scientific progress with ethical viewpoints and cultural practises. The adoption of new technologies is not likely to be universal across the world. Research on genome editing tailors innovation to a range of scaled-up products that obtained social licence and policy mandate. Decision making on the products of such research will be more meaningful when linked to a specific jurisdiction because the status of regulations varies between different countries. Depending on a jurisdiction, a socio-political compromise could be found with regard to the products of innovation, e.g., Bt cotton has not been opposed by the public in Australia as much as Bt maize in Europe, which implies that biotech crops grown for clothing might enjoy greater global social approval than their counterparts grown for food and feed purposes. Policy on innovation in those two areas and jurisdictions adjusts, respectively, and such a flexible adjustment becomes a basis for further policy development. Although genome editing is associated with scientific novelty and technological advancement, policy and law will treat it within existing regulatory frameworks for biotechnology unless there are new regulatory frameworks specifically developed for genome editing. Regulators will face two questions:

To answer these questions, we can posit three basic facts in relation to the regulation on genome editing:

From these facts it follows that the regulatory frameworks on genome editing will be developed from the same policy principles applied to biotechnology since the beginning of genetic engineering. An important policy question related to modern biotechnology has been whether regulation should be process-based or product-based; and the same question is relevant to genome editing. The product-based approach is governed by the principle of substantial equivalence. This approach considers whether a product of technology is as safe as its conventional counterparts. On the contrary, the process-based approach tends to implement more stringent rules on deliberate release and product authorisation. The process-based approach is de facto adopted in the EU, Australia and New Zealand, while countries like Canada and the US are represented by the product-based approach. US regulatory system relies on a qualitatively different risk management strategy. FDA and USDA have significantly more decision-making power over applications for authorisation, contrary to European Food Safety Authority whose activity does not exceed scientific advice. The US prioritises cost-benefit analysis over the precautionary principle. These approaches to regulation have different advantages and disadvantages. The process-based approach pays special attention to the precautionary principle as a significant political instrument to influence the distribution of costs and benefits of using new technologies; the product-based approach is result-oriented and pays attention to the principle of substantial equivalence. Because the US is the leader in biotechnology, it is legitimate to assume that in the future the global regulatory outcome will reflect the American model. On the other hand, a policy that aims at optimally balanced regulatory framework might prefer European approach to emerging technologies. Besides, it is quite realistic that the interaction of the two approaches will lead to an accommodation between them within certain jurisdictions, like it happens in Australia.

The extent to which genome editing will contribute to food security depends on how national governments place technological innovation in the regulatory frameworks. The striking contrast between the American product-based approach and the European process-based approach to the regulation of genome editing sends a challenge to countries in Africa and Asia struggling with malnutrition and low crop productivity. In Africa, the prevalence of undernourishment is the highest in the world, while 54 percent of the world's hungry people are in Asia (FAO, 2021).

Rural areas in the developing world are especially vulnerable to food insecurity and climate risk. Only a few countries in Africa and Southeast Asia have initiated public discussions and policy proposals initiating the development of national legal frameworks on genome editing. Integrating genome editing into their agricultural systems might be a difficult choice to make because the use biotechnology in agriculture implies the possibility to lose exports to the EU where genome editing is strictly regulated. However, difficult the choice, the current policy trend in the regulation of genome editing demonstrates prevailing movement toward exempting genome editing from the scope of GMO laws (Figure 3).

The question remains as to what extent those regulatory frameworks aim at food security facilitated by genome editing. A serious examination of the role of genome editing in delivering societal missions in addition to industrial objectives is required because the goals of sustainable development shift the focus of new technology from innovation outcome and economic performance to social and environmental impact. The persistence of environmental and social challenges demonstrates the urgency of transforming innovation policy and adjusting policy design on genome editing toward its contribution to sustainable development. Although a better public acceptance of new technologies can be achieved through science communication (Pfotenhauer et al., 2019), policy on innovation aims at a broader application than addressing the deficit of knowledge about technological advances. In addition to framing policy issues under the imperative that mandates more innovation as a solution to existing social and environmental challenges, policy makers face systemic problems that demand further transformation in their approach to innovation.

Lack of improvement in the problems of climate and society gives grounds to argue in favour of a transformative approach to innovation policy that extends the commercial outcomes of science and technology to ensure that technological innovation is socially inclusive and environmentally beneficial. In a nutshell, transformative innovation policy is focused on the environmental and social aspects of innovation in addition to educating, communicating and reducing the knowledge gap. It is a policy built on the premise that the political underpinnings of innovation need systemic transformation based on equity in the distribution of costs and benefits of new technologies. Transformative innovation policy aims at harnessing technological progress to expand social missions and open democratic processes alongside industrial and commercial processes. Transformative change forms one of the three pillars of innovation policy together with research and development and the systems of innovation (Schot and Steinmueller, 2018).

Transformative innovation policy in a genome editing context provides a toolkit to estimate the extent to which new technologies have the potential to solve societal problems and mitigate tensions in public opinion on gene technology. It is important to ensure the socio-technical integration of innovation in a way that secures positive public perception because genome editing as a solution to food security will inevitably be contested due to risks inherent in innovation. Applied to genome editing and its potential for crop genetic improvement, food security as a goal of sustainable development provides a common denominator for innovation policy aiming at an outcome that in addition to producing more food will also address pressing social challenges such as food-related diseases and equity in access to nutrition. Expanding the circle of stakeholders engaged in the process of policy deliberation will improve chances for a greater social inclusion and commitment to open dialogue in policy making. The industrial applicability of genome editing depends on regulatory environment, decision making and public perception. An alignment of goals between science and policy toward addressing societal challenges by means of genome editing can help realise the potential of modern biotechnology to contribute to food security, wealth, and sustainable development.

The quantitative and qualitative demands for food rise with time. Climate change and environmental degradation pose a serious threat to sustainable agriculture. Environments have become increasingly hostile to crops due to dramatic changes in the weather patterns of rainfalls, storms, floods, and droughts which are commonly attributed to the effects of climate change. Since the human population is projected to grow to more than 9 billion people by 2050, it is unlikely that the current agriculture is capable to meet the food needs of future generations without developing crop genetic improvement technologies. On this background, sustainable agriculture depends on the development of high-yielding crops and the improvement of agricultural practises.

Science, technology, and innovation underpin sustainable development. Further advancement of the science of plant breeding is necessary for achieving goals of sustainability. Modern biotechnology has a significant potential to contribute to food security, wealth, and sustainable development. Although it is hard to defy the argument of potential risks associated with crop genetic improvement techniques, it is equally difficult to find a more attractive argument in favour of innovative technologies than their apparent utility to meet the needs of growing population. Crop genetic improvement technologies may not be a perfect solution for meeting nutritional needs of growing world population in the environment growing increasingly hostile under the pressure of climate change, but the techniques of genome editing show great promise. Even though genome editing alone does not seem to be able to make up for the negative impact of harsh weather conditions on crops, it is an effective tool to mitigate that impact. However, it is impossible to address the issue of biodiversity and sustainability by means of science only. The complexity of global issues in food security requires the interface between science and policy to ensure the synergetic effect of socio-technical integration consistent with socio-economic considerations and implemented in a socially responsible manner. Innovation policy that aims at transforming its approach to genome editing toward a greater social inclusion, stakeholder engagement and sustainable development could ensure that genome editing contributes to sustainable agriculture by improving food security in a safe and responsible way for the benefit of society.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology (project number CE200100029) and funded by the Australian Government.

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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