Using CRISPR to create different sets of mutations in a gene promoter called SICLV3 (and in several other promoters) enabled researchers to vary the number of floral organs and locules (gelatinous seed compartments) in tomato, over a wide range. The effect is analogous to turning a dimmer switch to vary light levels over a continuous range. The result is the ability to adjust key traits to affect yield.
Credit: Lippman lab, CSHL
Science Daily: Plant geneticists develop a new application of CRISPR to break yield barriers in crops
CRISPR represents some of the most astounding science of a new era since it was never possible to do anything of this nature previously. There was resistance to GMO in the early days and the result of that with at least some has been the perception that there was only one variety of GMO plant from Monsanto but, oh, we took care of that because of the health risks, you know.
The fact is the protest didn't even slow down the development of GMO variants on the genomes of original species and, as you see in the example, there are many examples here alone and all of them have the general purpose of increasing crop yields.
Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have harnessed the still untapped power of genome editing to improve agricultural crops. Using tomato as an example, they have mobilized CRISPR/Cas9 technology to rapidly generate variants of the plant that display a broad continuum of three separate, agriculturally important traits: fruit size, branching architecture and overall plant shape. All are major components in determining how much a plant will yield. The method is designed to work in all food, feed, and fuel crops, including the staples rice, maize, sorghum and wheat.
- SD
Far from being a single GMO plant from Monsanta, it's realistically foreseeable now that GMO means all of them. There's no fear factor in that since the continued development shows it works and that provides the financial incentive to continue.
Zen Yogi: the problem has been with Monsanto and not with GMO?
That's exactly the problem, Yogi. It's correct that there's a duty to humanity to wipe out Monsanto but that doesn't have anything to do with GMO. Monsanto's lack of corporate morality is notorious and some clever dicks decided GMO was the way to take them down but the false charge, if anything, only made them stronger and allowed them to become even more abusive in global marketplaces.
You don't need GMO to take down Monsanto since they have been producing multiple of the world's deadliest poisons for decades, even going back as far as the manufacture of Agent Orange for use by the US military in Vietnam and that one wreaked untold havoc.
The original harvesters from back in the 30s or so weren't a fraction of this size nor did they have any type of AI robo directing them. Both aspects have increased radically since that time and that is already costing farming jobs but that's ok so long as the original farmer's job isn't one of them.
The picture shows all the goodness of farming and also that increasing yields has always been the purpose of improved farming. The improved yields from GMO happily does that but the picture doesn't reveal the insidious aspect in terms of the poisons GMO uses to control various pest insects, etc.
Problems with GMO have occurred by typically by pesticides blown over from one farm to another. In the first crop, the product has been engineered for higher yield with GMO but the other crop has not. That's led to quite a bit of destruction, most recently in Arkansas, but the GMO plants didn't do it. Monsanto poisons definitely did, however.
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