There is a journal describing a gene knockout study using CRISPR in rice, and I would like to repeat the same technique targeting the homologous gene but in a different cultivar. So I tried to search for any related patent document describing CRISPR editing of that gene but could not find any. So would it be right to assume it is unpatentable?
Answering this would require detailed study of your project. There's a reason patent lawyers charge thousands of dollars for answering this kind of question. It's hard, and a lot of work.
As you know, in crude terms, something would be patentable if it's novel, non-obvious and useful. Since you're just transferring a published technique to a new cultivar, one would have to suspect that it should fail the obviousness test, unless there's something specific and special going on. Is there something non-obvious that you think might happen in your new cultivar? Something that makes it different from the published cultivar? Something that would make people go "ahh" in surprise? Something that's unusually difficult to do, or in any way different from the published cultivar? If you can't point your finger on what that would be, and it would need to be quite compelling, then it's probably not patentable.
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