Citation: Vindigni, G.; Peri, I.; Consentino, F.; Selvaggi, R.; Spina, D. Exploring Consumers’ Attitudes towards Food Products Derived by New Plant Breeding Techniques. Sustainability 2022, 14, 5995. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14105995 Academic Editors: Heesup Han and António Raposo Received: 25 January 2022 Accepted: 13 May 2022 Published: 15 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Exploring Consumers’ Attitudes towards Food Products Derived by New Plant Breeding Techniques Gabriella Vindigni, Iuri Peri , Federica Consentino, Roberta Selvaggi and Daniela Spina * Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 100, 95123 Catania, Italy; vindigni@unict.it (G.V.); peri@unict.it (I.P.); federica.consentino@outlook.it (F.C.); roberta.selvaggi@unict.it (R.S.) * Correspondence: daniela.spina@unict.it Abstract: New plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) are seen as promising and innovative tools to achieve food security and food safety. Biotechnological innovations have great potential to address sustainable food development, and they are expected in the near future to play a critical role in feeding a growing population without exerting added pressure on the environment. There is, however, a considerable debate as to how these new techniques should be regulated and whether some or all of them should fall within the scope of EU legislation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), despite the product obtained being free from genes foreign to the species. In the EU, the adoption of these methods does not rely only on the scientific community but requires social acceptance and a political process that leads to an improved regulatory framework. In this paper, we present the results of an online survey carried out in Italy with 700 randomly selected participants on consumer attitudes towards food obtained by NPBTs. By applying the decision tree machine learning algorithm J48 to our dataset, we identified significant attributes to predict the main drivers of purchasing such products. A classification model accuracy assessment has also been developed to evaluate the overall performance of the classifier. The result of the model highlighted the role of consumers’ self-perceived knowledge and their trust in the European approval process for NPBT, as well as the need for a detailed label. Our findings may support decision makers and underpin the development of NPBT products in the market. Keywords: agricultural biotechnology; new plant breeding technique; NPBT; consumers’ attitude; food safety; machine learning; data mining 1. Introduction The selection of more efficient and productive varieties is a practice that began with the birth of agriculture itself when farmers chose the best plants from the wild for domesti- cation [1]. For a long time, conventional breeding techniques have been the only methods to improve cultivated plants [2], requiring many generations to achieve the intended re- sults [3]. In the past, the need to increase yields and obtain quality products has usually been addressed with the use of inputs such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation water, in some cases raising environmental concerns [4]. Scientific advances in molecular biology over the past 50 years have contributed to significant progress in plant breeding and the establishment of genetics as a science [5] with a great potential to increase the resilience of food systems and guarantee food security and food safety. Genetic improvement may provide tools able to stabilize yields, increase resistance to biotic or abiotic stresses, increase drought tolerance, reduce adverse effects of climate change, improve nutritional quality, increase shelf life and reduce allergenicity [6]. Despite these advantages, gene editing may cause unintentional implications and genetic errors, and the effect on human health and the environment has still to be proven. The recombinant DNA technique has been the most innovative method introduced thus far. It has made it possible to insert genes into organisms to encode desirable traits [7], Sustainability 2022, 14, 5995. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14105995 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability