E.U. Nears Approval of Gene-Edited Crops as Olive Sector Eyes Future Applications

Update, June 17, 2026: The European Parliament has given final approval to the regulation on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), completing the legislative process and clearing the way for its implementation across the European Union.

The European Union is one step away from allowing advanced genetic editing techniques to be applied to a wide variety of crops. The regulation presented by the European Commission, and already approved by both the Council and a major committee of the European Parliament, is expected to take effect across the 27-member bloc within the next few weeks.

Everything around us evolves continuously. Pathogens evolve, insects evolve, climates evolve. Plants also need to adapt.– Luigi Cattivelli, Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Center

The last obstacle to the new regulation is a volley of amendments introduced by the Socialist center-left group. Given the significance of the issue and the political need for a broad majority, the final plenary vote appears to have been unofficially delayed while lawmakers work to resolve outstanding concerns.

The goal of the new regulation is to improve crop resilience to climate-related impacts by creating a faster pathway for developing resilient plants through genetic editing.

Should the new rules come into force as expected, a 24-month grace period has been introduced to allow the European Commission to fine-tune operational aspects. May 2028 is considered the possible date for full implementation, as breeders will then be able to formally submit their varieties. Products could begin appearing in the supply chain shortly afterward.

New Genomic Techniques pertaining to the First Category (NGT-1) are being deregulated. These include more than 20 genetic modifications that could naturally occur in crop varieties or could be obtained through traditional cross-breeding.

While conventional breeding relies on the “lottery” of natural reproduction, NGT-1 allows direct, targeted changes. Such an approach could reduce the number of years required to develop a new resilient variety.

In conventional breeding, when a significant crop, such as a high-yielding tomato, is crossed with a wild, drought-resistant one, the offspring receives the drought-resistance gene but also thousands of undesirable genes from the wild parent, such as small fruit size or bitter taste. It can take more than a decade of backcrossing to restore the desired characteristics.

NGT-1 can dramatically reduce the amount of backcrossing needed by introducing specific targeted mutations directly into elite varieties, while still relying on subsequent selection and breeding steps to stabilize desired traits.

The goals of NGT-1 development include crops tolerant to water stress, including the ability to withstand the increasing salinity of coastal areas. By activating genes that make plants more resilient to major diseases or less attractive to pests, NGT-1 could considerably reduce pesticide use and other chemical applications.

Furthermore, NGT-1-edited crops can carry healthier fats, developing oilseeds such as sunflower or olive with higher oleic acid content or reduced saturated fat. Vitamin D and antioxidant levels in fruits and vegetables could also be improved, along with resistance to decay, significantly extending shelf life. All NGT-1 varieties will be listed in a public E.U. database.

These approaches are rooted in decades of previous genetic research. Long before the arrival of modern editing techniques, plant breeders were already inducing random mutations through chemical agents or radiation.

“Mutations have been induced since the 1950s,” Luigi Cattivelli, director of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Center at CREA, Italy’s Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, told Olive Oil Times. “What editing changes is precision.”

According to Cattivelli, the difference is that traditional mutagenesis creates thousands of random genetic changes, many of which are useless or harmful, whereas NGT-1 targets a single known gene.

“A mutation is still a mutation,” he said, adding that some edited mutations simply reproduce changes that already exist in nature.

The regulation maintains strict control over NGT-2 because the Second Category includes complex genetic editing that is not achievable through natural processes. Those techniques fall under existing GMO provisions, which include full risk assessment procedures, mandatory labeling and costly regulatory authorizations.

While approval for traditional GMOs can add up to ten years to the development phase, NGT-1 applications may be processed within 90 to 120 days, as these plants are considered equivalent to those produced by conventional means.

Consequently, costs are drastically reduced, making NGT-1 development affordable for small and medium-sized enterprises rather than only multinational corporations. The European Commission has repeatedly described the process as a “democratization of innovation.”

“Everything around us evolves continuously. Pathogens evolve, insects evolve, climates evolve. Plants also need to adapt,” Cattivelli said.

“There are miraculous visions and there are ideological positions where people think nothing should ever be changed,” he added. “But there is one point that cannot be ignored: we cannot avoid adaptation.”

“A plant obtained through genome editing carries a mutation introduced into one of its own genes,” Cattivelli explained. “The mutations induced through editing are fundamentally equivalent to natural mutations that already form the biological basis of biodiversity.”

While GMOs may contain genetic material originating from outside the organism being modified, this does not occur in NGT-1s.

“This is why it is not possible afterward to distinguish whether a mutation occurred naturally or through editing,” Cattivelli said.

Cattivelli also argued that much of the public debate around genetic technologies still rests on a misunderstanding of modern agriculture itself.

“People do not realize that everything around them has already been genetically selected by humans,” he said. “The idea that food exists exactly as nature created it simply does not exist. A cultivated field is not nature. A forest is nature. Agriculture has always modified plants.”

The scientist used the olive tree as an example. “Think of those in your grove. They have many problems, starting with disease,” he said, citing as examples the spread of Xylella fastidiosa, olive fruit fly pressure and rapidly shifting environmental conditions.

“All pathogens and pests evolve continuously. Meanwhile the olive tree, which is a millenary plant, has remained largely unchanged,” he added.

“We live in a biological system. Every living organism evolves trying to gain more evolutionary space,” Cattivelli said.

As an example, he described the emergence of wheat blast disease in Brazil after a rice pathogen evolved the ability to infect wheat. “This is exactly what evolution does,” he said. “And agriculture has to respond.”

According to him, one of the contradictions at the center of the current debate is the widespread assumption that historical cultivars will automatically remain suitable under radically different climatic conditions.

“When someone tells me climate is changing and temperatures are rising, I ask what scientific rationale supports the idea that varieties selected 100 years ago under colder conditions will automatically remain perfect in a warmer future,” he said.

“Making agriculture more sustainable without losing productivity under climate change is one of the major challenges of the coming years,” Cattivelli added.

The challenge becomes especially difficult in olive cultivation. Unlike apples or many annual crops, olives have undergone relatively little breeding renewal over the past century. Many traditional cultivars remain genetically close to those cultivated generations ago.

“In olives, the varietal system remains largely the traditional one,” Cattivelli said. “There has been very limited genetic renewal.”

At the same time, olive trees remain among the most difficult species to apply genomic technologies to.

“The olive tree has a complicated biology, very long cycles and still limited genetic knowledge,” he said. “But the main issue is regeneration in vitro.”

Most NGT techniques require scientists to temporarily grow plant cells in laboratory conditions before regenerating them into entire plants. While this process is routine in many crops, olives remain highly resistant to reliable regeneration.

“In species where regeneration is not possible, today NGTs are not really an option,” Cattivelli said. “Olive and peach are among the difficult cases.”

Still, he insisted the problem is solvable. “The first challenge is developing reliable and reproducible regeneration systems,” he said. “Once that barrier is overcome, editing itself will no longer be the problem.”

Cattivelli compared scientific research to a long criminal investigation.

“A researcher searches for a solution exactly like investigators search for a fugitive,” he said. “You know the solution exists somewhere, but you do not know whether you will find it tomorrow or after 20 years.”

The researcher also pointed to examples where modern editing builds on knowledge developed through older breeding methods. He described how scientists discovered a natural mutation in barley that made the plant resistant to powdery mildew by disabling a gene known as MLO.

Later, scientists found the same gene in other species, including grapevines.

“If you modify the MLO gene in vine the same way it was modified in barley, the vine becomes resistant too,” Cattivelli said. “This is what editing does. It transfers knowledge.”

He said the same principle applies to many other traits, from disease resistance to oil composition and nutritional quality.

Cattivelli cited high-oleic sunflower oil as an example of how genetic modification techniques are already present in daily food production. Developed through traditional mutagenesis, high-oleic sunflower oil contains a higher level of oleic acid, making it more stable during industrial frying.

“This is not about changing nature in some abstract way,” he said. “If you can improve the quality of an oil or reduce the need for chemicals, that is also a form of health and sustainability.”

Plant genomics expert Roberto Velasco, who is assuming the role of director general of the Edmund Mach Foundation in northern Italy, agreed that the scientific bottleneck is primarily technical and financial rather than theoretical.

“The olive tree is still very far behind compared to crops like maize or soybeans,” Velasco told Olive Oil Times. “The first bottleneck is tissue culture. If you cannot overcome that step, you cannot perform targeted mutations.”

Velasco explained that many woody crops struggle in laboratory regeneration systems due to high concentrations of tannins and polyphenols, which damage cells during early developmental stages.

“These species tend to brown and die very quickly in vitro,” he said.

The same compounds that make extra virgin olive oil valuable for human health are also making it harder for researchers to find the correct approach.

Still, Velasco said progress is inevitable. “In the end, once you understand the biology of a species, you find the balance,” he said. “The more investment there is, the sooner results arrive.”

Without detailed genomic knowledge, researchers may not yet know which genes control resistance to Xylella, olive fly pressure, oil composition or other agronomically important traits.

“If you do not know which genes are involved, you cannot target them,” Velasco explained.

That lag reflects the economic structure of the olive sector itself.

“The olive oil world is ultimately still a Mediterranean niche,” Velasco said. “There is simply less investment compared to maize, soybeans or other global commodities.”

Interestingly, the new regulations preclude organic farmers from adopting NGT-1 varieties. This means an organic farmer cannot knowingly use NGT-1 seeds, and an organic product cannot contain NGT-1 ingredients.

“Some organic producers are asking why they should automatically renounce these tools,” Velasco said. “These technologies were designed exactly to reduce inputs and increase sustainability.”

The regulation provides for this exclusion to be reviewed in the future once initial data on the environmental impacts of NGT-1 are assessed.

Velasco stressed that NGT-1 biotechnologies may do more than reduce pesticide use and facilitate adaptation to climate change.

“They can increase biodiversity. When you create new clones and new varieties, biodiversity increases, not decreases,” he said.

He argued that genomic breeding may actually expand the diversity of cultivars available to growers. “There will not be one single improved clone replacing everything,” he said. “There will be hundreds or thousands of new clones.”

The European framework may soon open the regulatory door, but scientific and financial obstacles still prevent olive research from advancing toward practical NGT applications.

“The more we invest,” Velasco said, “the earlier we will get there.”