Page 68 - Breeding Edge ebook

And when it comes to the inventors who are leading the CRISPR revolution, iRunway reported that the
Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang is clearly ahead in terms of intellectual property assets, with 355.

These inventors obviously have a head start, but many others are expected to jump into the precision
breeding community.

Citing market research, iRunway predicts that the genome editing/genome-engineering market
will double to $6.28 billion by 2022 from $3.19 billion in 2017, at a compound annual growth rate
of 14.5 percent.

“This will be driven by rising
government funding, university
research, growth in the number of
genomics projects, quest for finding
sustainable treatment for infectious
diseases and cancer, increasing
production of genetically modified
crops and growing application areas
of genomics,” iRunway’s report
noted.

But others aren’t so sure that U.S.
government funding will play much
of a role. Already, U.S. federal
investment has been declining
while countries like China are
dramatically ramping up their
research efforts.

“America is still ahead of the
game, but we are reaping the
investments made over the last
many years,” said NIFA’s
Ramaswamy. “The Chinese
invest between 5.5 and 6 percent
of their gross domestic product
(GDP) on public research. In the
ag and food space in America, it’s less than 2 percent of GDP. So, the Chinese and others are
surpassing us.”

That’s a trend that many land grant universities and NGO’s hope to reverse in the upcoming farm bill
debate, as they advocate for more federal research dollars. Last fall, over 60 organizations signed a
consensus document, calling for an annual $6 billion goal for USDA food and agricultural research over
fiscal year 2019 to 2023.

“The U.S. has been second to China in total public agricultural research funding since 2008. By
2013, China’s spending on public agricultural R&D became nearly double that of the U.S.,” the
letter noted. “Though public funding for other forms of domestic research has risen dramatically,

66 www.Agri-Pulse.com