Like many people, I've always viewed genetically-modified products (GMOs) with a certain amount of skepticism. Do we really need tomatoes engineered to have a longer shelf life than Miracle Whip, or corn bred for its resistance to weed killer rather than flavor? What could be better than an organically-grown heirloom tomato harvested at the peak of ripeness? Why mess with nature?
If you live in a rich country where the stores are overflowing with produce, this is an easy attitude to take. But if you're from India, population well over a billion and rising fast, it's harder to be complacent. On current estimates, India needs to double its agricultural output by 2025 in order to meet demand, in a country where resources are already stretched. And that's to say nothing of Africa. The population genie is out of the bottle; modern problems need modern solutions.
Advocates of biotechnology argue that genetic engineering can help, by providing crops more resistant to drought, pests, and spoilage. But whatever the potential of GMOs, the backlash from foodies and environmentalists -- the "frankenfood" lobby -- has had a chilling impact. Many European countries have outlawed transgenic organisms (those that insert a gene from one species into another, mixing DNA fron wheat into corn, say), setting off major trade disputes with the U.S. Factor in the interests of biotech firms enforcing their patents and you have a recipe for stalemate.
Happily, these controversies may soon be a thing of the past. As reported in Wired Magazine (Super Organics, May 2004) the science has moved on, as a growing body of researchers are bypassing genetic engineering in favor of "smart breeding" techniques that are both less controversial, and -- crucially -- difficult or impossible to patent. Call it conventional breeding informed by modern genetic research.
To sum up, it turns out nature already has plenty of genetic variety, without inventing new species. Existing wheat strains, for example, may already possess genes to confer drought resistance -- all you have to do is figure out how to turn them on. This is what conventional breeders have done for hundreds of years, through trial-and-error, but progress traditionally took generations. New understanding of how genes work, however, combined with the data-crunching power of computers, make it possible to pinpoint genes with far greater precision, and achieve results in a fraction of the time. The result may be "superorganics," foods tailored to meet the needs of human populations by harvesting the latent potential in nature.
Very very cool stuff.
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