San Diego, California, USA
June 17, 2026
Under new EU rules, crops improved without adding foreign DNA will be treated like conventionally bred crops, validating the approach Cibus has developed for 25 years
Cibus, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBUS) today welcomed a landmark decision by the European Union. For the first time, crops improved without adding foreign DNA will be treated like conventionally bred crops, not like transgenic GMOs. The decision opens a path for European farmers to grow cleaner crops much more productively, including for example by fighting disease and pests with far fewer chemicals, and it validates the approach Cibus has spent nearly 25 years developing.
Cibus improves crops the way nature does, only far faster. Starting from a seed company's best existing varieties, Cibus can add several improvements at once, combining valuable traits like disease resistance, higher yields, and better quality. Cibus can also deliver a finished, traited plant in as little as about twelve months, instead of the many years conventional breeding takes. That speed lets seed companies bring stronger, cleaner crops to market on a timeline that was not possible before. A trait like disease resistance can keep large volumes of fungicide and pesticide out of the food system by helping a plant better protect itself.
European regulators are drawing a clear line. On one side, transgenic GMOs, which add foreign DNA. On the other, the precise, non-transgenic improvements Cibus makes to a plant's own genes. The new rules also reward exactly the kind of traits Cibus develops. Crops that resist disease, use water and nutrients more efficiently, and need fewer chemicals qualify for the framework's non-GMO fast lane, where they are treated the same as conventionally bred crops.
"The E.U. has completed a rigorous, multi-year, science-based review and reached the right conclusion," said Peter Beetham, Ph.D., President and Chief Operating Officer of Cibus and a plant scientist who has worked on this question for decades. "It recognizes a simple scientific truth: crops with changes that could also occur in nature or through traditional breeding should be regulated accordingly.”
"This framework opens one of the world's most important agricultural markets to the next generation of plant breeding," said Craig Wichner, Chief Executive Officer of Cibus. "Seed companies that want to bring stronger, cleaner, multi-trait crops to market now have an open door, and a partner that can combine the improvements they need into their own best varieties at a fraction of the time and cost of conventional breeding.”
Many countries look to Europe when they set their own crop and seed rules, so Cibus expects today's decision to encourage similar changes elsewhere. That builds on progress already underway in markets like the United Kingdom, where Cibus has completed field trials of its pod shatter reduction trait in winter oilseed rape.
How Cibus does it. Cibus starts with a seed company's best existing varieties and makes precise improvements, often several at once, to a single cell from those varieties. It then grows that cell into a full plant carrying the new traits. The seed company keeps the variety it spent years perfecting; Cibus adds the improvements and licenses them back. Cibus' changes are precise edits to the plant's own genes, with no foreign DNA added, which is what separates them from transgenic GMOs. Cibus traits like disease resistance, and pod shatter reduction in canola and oilseed rape, are expected to qualify as Category 1 under the new EU rules, the tier treated the same as conventionally bred crops.
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