 As climate's changed due to global warming, it's becoming ever more challenging to grow the food that we need. But genetic technologies may allow us to develop crops that can survive and even thrive in extremely hot and dry environments. At the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Dr. Ingo Hine leads a team looking at protecting crops against pests and pathogens, as we are losing approximately 25% of crops to diseases worldwide. Crops have always faced challenges, but we are now living in an era where we have more people on the planet, we have less land to feed people, and we need more production of crops. So we're living in a challenging environment to feed an ever-growing population. I work on potatoes, and what we do research-wise is we're looking for disease-resistances and wild species. Once we have characterised resistances, we can apply this research through breeding to develop new cultivars. So it's all about genetics. Understanding a complex trait requires you to identify the DNA that is responsible for the manifestation of this trait. So what we do, we identify the underlying gene and then we can do our research on the function of this gene, how it protects plants from diseases. This can be done either by precision breeding, using molecular markers to generate new varieties, or through genetic technologies to improve well-established varieties. Genetic markers are basically a molecular beacon that allows us to track the presence of a resistance in a plant. So the potato genome, for example, has 840 million base pairs. If you put this in context in terms of scale, it's about 2,600 kilometres of A4 sheets of paper printed out. A single resistance gene on the same scale is about 5 metres in length. So we are looking for 5 metres in 2,600 kilometres. And that's what we have as a marker. It's a molecular beacon that tells us this part of DNA is present. Therefore, what we're looking for is also present in the plant. Gene editing is a relatively new tool. It's a mechanism in bacteria to protect bacteria against viruses. But it allows us to actually specifically target a single gene in the genome and modify this gene. We can switch it on or switch it off or increase its capacity to work. Commercial applications of genome editing are in their infancy, as industries are subject to government regulations on the use of genetically modified food substances. So genetic modification is a process by which we conserve the integrity of the genome, but we add a single or multiple genes that are required for resistances. If we have a susceptible cultivar, for example, that has very good economical attributes, we can bring these new resistance genes into this background and thereby make this cultivar resistant. What are the challenges of working in this industry? I think one of the big issues that we're really facing is public perception. We can produce cultivars that can either be done through breeding or through gene editing or genetic modification, but if there's no acceptance from the public, these cultivars will never reach a market. And also what's missing is a political regulatory environment that actually helps the public having an informed decision if they want these sort of crops or not. I think it's important to have all options available for us. Breeding is a very important part of crop production, but gene editing definitely is more precise, but it's a new technology, so the regulatory framework has to catch up with this technology first. What skills and qualifications are important for young people to work in this sector? I think curiosity is really important. You want to be curious to figure out why is one plant resistant and why is another plant completely susceptible, for example. In terms of transferable skills, I think problem-solving skills are really important because we are in uncharted territory. You're looking at something that nobody else has looked before, so you want to understand the mechanism behind these various traits, resistances or adaptation to climate. And another trait that has become really important are computational skills because the generation of data, it being genomics data or transcriptomic data, is becoming really simple and very cost-effective as well, but making sense out of data, that is really critical. So there are various career paths that people can take to come into science. You can follow the traditional route going through university, going up to a PhD level, so very academic. You can also go through industry. And once you are in science, you can do research, but you can also branch out into different disciplines. So, for example, you could have outreach, you could have career and politics where we can make informed decisions about biology, for example, how it impacts on our lives. I love it. I love the research and also like the applied side of it, so it's the research and the applied angle, but also it's very international. We work with colleagues all over the world. We have a fantastic network and we all work together on the same goal, trying to improve our crops. When do you think the legislation will be in place to allow the deployment of these technologies? In some respect, the legislation has already changed in certain countries. For example, in America and Canada, for example, gene-edited plants are already commercially produced. In England, we also seen changes just recently. And I think other countries will follow suit to help us address a really important question. How do we feed ever-growing human population on this planet? So, if we go forward 10 years, a decade or so, do you foresee widespread use of gene-edited crops? I would foresee that gene-edited crops are used more widely, but I hope that also we see a shift in the argument that we are no longer looking at the technologies that are being used to produce crops, but more at the attributes of these crops, that they are safe, healthy, nutritional, and can be produced sustainably. Yeah, because could you give us a sense of the impact that these technologies could have on the world? Absolutely. There are many direct implications that you could see, for example, making more nutritionals and more healthy food. And when we cook or roast or toast our food, we can introduce unwanted chemicals that are toxic for humans, for example, or could be toxic for humans. We have a good understanding of the biochemistry, and we can actually mitigate the risk of these products being formed. Similarly, we lose about 20% to 30% of our crops to diseases. If we can mitigate this risk and produce more food, then again, we can add to the foods that is needed to feed our population. So it's not only about creating more food in areas that particularly need it, but also healthier food, less pesticides, and so on, a real range of advantages. Absolutely. These applications are very broad. But gene editing is only one tool that's at our disposal. And we shouldn't ignore all the other tools, like traditional breeding, but we must not exclude tools that are coming online, such as gene editing, just now. Well, Ingo, thank you very much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.