The Agriculture & Food Systems Institute (AFSI), under the auspices of the South Asia Biosafety Program (SABP) and in collaboration with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS), and Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), organized two events in February 2024 to raise awareness about the publication of “Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for Research and Release of Genome Edited Plants of Categories SDN-1 and SDN-2, 2023” by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). The culmination of a multi-year drafting process involving a broad range of stakeholders, the SOP details the procedure whereby applicants can demonstrate the absence of any exogenously introduced DNA and request confirmation through the appropriate channels to register or release the plant following the same procedure as those used for conventionally bred counterparts. |