Japan gives green light to Corteva Agriscience's genome edited waxy corn product

Report Highlights

On March 20, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW) and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) added a waxy corn product to their lists of genome edited products not subject to regulations for genetically engineered food, feed, and biodiversity. This is the fourth type of genome edited product added to the lists and the first developed a by a non-Japanese company. Corteva Agriscience developed the waxy corn product using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to increase amylopectin in the corn.

General Information

Corteva Agriscience developed the genome edited corn using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to make a targeted deletion of the waxy gene (Wx1), which increased the proportion of amylopectin in the starch to nearly 100 percent. In traditional corn, the starch is typically 75 percent amylopectin and 25 percent pectin. In addition to the food industry, the textile and paper industries also use amylopectin.

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW) and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) request that all genome edited products undergo a consultation and notification process prior to their commercialization in Japan, see JA2020- 0184 for more details.

On March 20, MHLW and the two MAFF regulatory authorities added the waxy corn to the list of genome edited products that are not subject to Japan’s GE food, feed, and biodiversity regulations. For more on the MHLW and MAFF decisions, see below (Japanese only):

MHLW – Food Safety
MAFF – Feed Safety
MAFF – Biodiversity

As of March 2023, MHLW and MAFF have added four types of products to their lists of genome edited products that are not subject to Japan’s GE food, feed, and biodiversity regulations, including a high GABA tomato, high-yield seabream, fast growing tiger pufferfish, and the waxy corn.