Attitudes to Plant Breeding Technologies

Growing food for an expanding world population when the climate is changing is becoming increasingly challenging. Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been selecting and manipulating plants to increase, among other things, the total yield, colour and flavour, and disease resistance of crops. Many types of breeding and plant development are now available. They use methods that range from the relatively simple (e.g., sexual crosses) to the advanced (e.g., laboratory-based gene editing). Despite the variety of methods in current use, the current debates are often on the pros and cons of genetically modified (GM) crops. As evidence of this, most public attitudes to food technology have been examined in relation to transgenic food (aka GM crops). This research shows that public attitudes to GM crops are often negative (e.g., Lefebvre, Cook, & Griffiths, 2019; Magnusson & Koivisto Hursti, 2002). It is unclear, however, whether people are aware of the many ways in which food is developed, and that many currently consumed foods are the products of applied technologies. More importantly, it is not yet known whether or how this knowledge would influence people’s opinions or their purchasing decisions. This study aims to investigate whether people would be more positive to laboratory manipulated food development once they learn about the range of interventions used to bring them the foods that they currently eat and enjoy. To this end, a longitudinal study will be conducted where participants will first be presented with information about various forms of plant breeding (e.g., sexual crosses, GM crops). They will then be asked to rate their willingness to purchase food developed through these different methods. One week later, participants will be asked whether they eat certain food crops. They will then be informed about the technologies that have been used in the development of those crops. Finally, the participants will then again rate their willingness to eat foods developed with various technologies. We hypothesise that at time 1, participants’ attitudes to plants/food will be increasingly negative the more they perceive the breeding as an undesirable intervention (H1).We also hypothesise that at time 2, once participants learn that they are already eating and enjoying foods that are highly manipulated, compared to time 1, their attitudes to these foods will become less negative (H2); that breeding technologies will be perceived as more beneficial (H3); less risky (H4); and they will show greater willingness to purchase highly technologically manipulated products.