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First Online: 11 April 2017

Competing interests

: None of the authors declares a financial conflict in relationship to the contents of this response to the Giddings and Miller article. In the interests of disclosure, however, the authors state that some of us or our laboratories are conducting research in the areas under discussion that could have potential commercial applications. D.M.S. is conducting research that could potentially facilitate use of genetic engineering; R.M.A., R.A.D. and C.N.S. are developing plants or methods with genetic engineering that in the future could have potential commercial applications; R.M.A., R.A.D. and C.M.S. are listed as inventors on patents under the following numbers: (R.M.A.) 7,888,122; 7,723,565; 7,420,102; 7,303,918; 7,199,282; 7,129,396; 6,921,849; 6,693,228; 6,359,197; 5,689,042; (R.A.D.) 5,530,187; 5,750,399; 6,316,697; 6,573,432; 7,038,113; 7,384,759; 7,432,425; 7,622,638; 7,709,701; 7,316,928; 7,442,851; 7,663,023; 7,816,507; 7,880,059; 7,888,533; 8,129,592; 8,138,392 B2; 8,420,889 B2; 8,796,509 B2; 8,809,627 B2; 8,901,371 B2; 9,045,549 B2; 9,121,031 B2; 9,238,821B2; 2,404,104; 2003270537; 2005265356; 2007213711; 2008245794; 538259; 552453; 552941; 570395; 591217; (C.N.S.) 6,261,561; 6,406,885; 6,881,411; 6,927,322; 7,973,213; 8,604,276; 9,157,087. C.N.S. is receiving royalties on university-assigned inventions and the R.A.D. laboratory receives research funding from commercial entities (Forage Genetics International (US) and Grasslanz Technology Ltd. (New Zealand)).