BEIJING (Reuters) -&nbsp;China&nbsp;has approved the&nbsp;safety&nbsp;of a&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;soybean, its&nbsp;first&nbsp;approval of the technology in a&nbsp;crop, as the country increasingly looks to science to boost food production.
The soybean, developed by privately owned Shandong Shunfeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd, has two modified&nbsp;genes, significantly raising the level of healthy fat oleic acid in the plant.
The&nbsp;safety&nbsp;certificate has been approved for five years from April 21, according to a document published last week by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
Unlike&nbsp;genetic modification, which introduces foreign&nbsp;genes into a plant,&nbsp;gene&nbsp;editing alters existing&nbsp;genes.
The technology is considered to be less risky than GMOs and is more lightly regulated in some countries, including&nbsp;China, which published rules on&nbsp;gene-editing last year.
"The approval of the&nbsp;safety&nbsp;certificate is a shot in the arm for the Shunfeng team," said the firm in a statement to Reuters on Thursday.
Shunfeng claims to be the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company in&nbsp;China&nbsp;seeking to commercialise&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;crops.
It is currently researching around 20 other&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;crops, including higher yield rice, wheat and corn, herbicide-resistant rice and soybeans and vitamin C-rich lettuce, said a company representative.
United States-based company Calyxt also developed a high oleic soybean, producing a healthy oil that was the&nbsp;first&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;food to be approved in the U.S. in 2019.
Several additional steps are needed before&nbsp;China's farmers can plant the novel soybean, including approvals of seed varieties with the tweaked&nbsp;genes.
The approval comes as trade tensions, erratic weather and war in major grain exporter Ukraine have increased concerns in Beijing over feeding the country's 1.4 billion people.
A growing middle class is also facing a surge in diet-related disease.
China&nbsp;is promoting GMO&nbsp;crops too, starting large-scale trials of GM corn this year.
Getting&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;crops onto the market is expected to be faster however, given fewer steps in the regulatory process.
Aside from the United States, Japan has also approved&nbsp;gene-edited&nbsp;foods, including healthier tomatoes and faster-growing fish.
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(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Christina Fincher)

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China approves safety of first gene-edited crop