Professor Frank O'Mara:

We are very glad that some progress is being made with regard to the ability to use gene editing within Europe. We have lagged behind other regions of the world for a good while. It obviously has a lot of application for crops be they cereal crops, grass or vegetable horticultural crops very much around the potential to improve traits like resistance to disease, resistance to pests or quality. I will leave it to Mr. Callaghan to deal specifically with its role in horticulture. It has to be positive that it will be more available to us - hopefully, in the fairly near future.

Mr. Callaghan probably knows more about mixed enterprises. It would be lovely to think from a rotation perspective that we could get more people involved in making their land available for a year or two as part of a rotation. The challenge with horticulture is that it has become so specialised that the expertise and machinery you need to grow crops and the market outlet you need for them make it difficult to dip in and out of the area. The only way I could see it really working is if an existing horticultural grower got access to more land. At least in the main, that is probably how you would get more people involved. Mr. Callaghan might have some views on that.