Alternative to GMO Becoming Popular in Agriculture

Using the latest genetic science to create non GMO innovations in Agriculture is fast becoming a revolution in food production...

In part to circumvent the controversy surrounding GMOs, fruit and vegetable breeders at both universities and private companies have been turning to an alternative way of modifying the food we eat: a sophisticated approach known as marker-assisted breeding that marries traditional plant breeding with rapidly improving tools for isolating and examining alleles and other sequences of DNA that serve as “markers” for specific traits. Although these tools are not brand-new, they are becoming faster, cheaper and more useful all the time.

“The impact of genomics on plant breeding is almost beyond my comprehension,”says Shelley Jansky, a potato breeder who works for both the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The modifications that can be achieved using these techniques are truly outstanding too!

Winter cantaloupes that don't rot as easily, the jabanada pepper with all the flavour but non of the heat and onions that are "easy on the eye" are just some of the innovations that have been achieved so far!

Up until now GMO has mainly been aimed at making the life of the producer easier ... Crops that yield well, crops that survive in tough growing conditions, fruit and veg that lasts longer on the journey to the supermarket etc etc...

The exciting thing about using traditional cross breeding techniques coupled with high-tech genetic markers is that the benefits are tailored to the consumer, producing plants with higher nutritional content (such as broccoli) or plants with better flavour as in the case mentioned where some hardy modern tomato varieties have been crossed with Heirloom tomatoes to create tomatoes high in geranial, which is what is important in giving the tomato a nice strong flavour.

With these methods bringing about new varieties at an exciting rate it seems that non GMO foods that are packed with modern day technology, are the future of Agriculture and for once its us that stand to benefit.


Link to Story

And finally a short video I found about using the technique in wheat cultivation...

Rice and Peace.

reply to post by Lagrimas

The exciting thing about using traditional cross breeding techniques coupled with high-tech genetic markers is that the benefits are tailored to the consumer, producing plants with higher nutritional content (such as broccoli) or plants with better flavour as in the case mentioned where some hardy modern tomato varieties have been crossed with Heirloom tomatoes to create tomatoes high in geranial, which is what is important in giving the tomato a nice strong flavour.

This is an example of the power of persuasion from the free market. (No matter how controlled that market is.)

People want better stuff. And companies are realizing that is where the money is. You can charge much more for the same thing simply because it doesn't taste like wood pulp.

The original GMO push was to produce as much as possible.

Specialty brands are popping up now pushing organic, even thought the organic is not much better. If the focus changes to quality of product in organic lines though we may see some very good developments in AG.

boncho
reply to post by Lagrimas

 

The exciting thing about using traditional cross breeding techniques coupled with high-tech genetic markers is that the benefits are tailored to the consumer, producing plants with higher nutritional content (such as broccoli) or plants with better flavour as in the case mentioned where some hardy modern tomato varieties have been crossed with Heirloom tomatoes to create tomatoes high in geranial, which is what is important in giving the tomato a nice strong flavour.

This is an example of the power of persuasion from the free market. (No matter how controlled that market is.)

People want better stuff. And companies are realizing that is where the money is. You can charge much more for the same thing simply because it doesn't taste like wood pulp.

The original GMO push was to produce as much as possible.

Specialty brands are popping up now pushing organic, even thought the organic is not much better. If the focus changes to quality of product in organic lines though we may see some very good developments in AG.

Yes I think producers, are indeed turning their eye towards what the consumer wants, and attempting to make profitable produce that stand out from flavourless, nutritionless, mass produced rubbish.

reply to post by Lagrimas

Yes I think producers, are indeed turning their eye towards what the consumer wants, and attempting to make profitable produce that stand out from flavourless, nutritionless, mass produced rubbish.

Similar to the "Greek Yogurt" you might see at the grocery store. In the old days, there was yogurt. Moms used to make it, people had yogurt makers, home made yogurt, etc.

It was thick like mud and tasted sour.

Then you had flavoured yogurt.

Then a company made a yogurt drink, which was just yogurt mixed with milk.

Then everyone worried about calories so all the grocery store yogurts became watered down (milk) yogurt.

Then people realized drinking yogurt for breakfast sucks, so now they sell "greek yogurt" which is just normal consistency yogurt that people used to eat every day.

reply to post by Lagrimas


so the alternative to GMO is GMO ???

ignorant_ape
reply to post by Lagrimas

 

so the alternative to GMO is GMO ???

Haha no my friend thought that too, but there is a huge difference!

We have been selecting plants for their flavour and looks and breeding them together for 9000 years.

By using modern genetic science to simply look and decide which are the best two plants to breed together (naturally by pollinating) we get to speed that process up greatly.

GMO involves actually altering the genetic sequence of a plant in a lab, in this process nature is left to bring the two plants together. A subtle but huge difference.

I am not denying that selective breeding does cause genetic change, however one has to ask oneself if one truly considers just rubbing the pollen from one plant you've chosen on another plant that you favour, is Genetic Modification.

This is great news.

For me, it is the difference between taking two natural plants, figuring out what is "best" in those plants, and breeding them for a better plant. Or even stimulating some part of it, to make it "more"
Still all natural.

The problem I have with the GMO's, is they are adding chemicals into the plant, thus making it "unnatural". Without enough outside, independent, long term studies, to make sure it is even safe to do so.



Boy, I'm really great at make things clear. But hopefully you understand my meaning.

The human body often reacts to proteins. It has to disassemble them to get at the amino acids and other elements that make them up. Some proteins the body will react poorly to, for example many people react poorly to gluten and other similar proteins, or to dairy. There are different kinds of biochemical reactions. Some are the official 'allergy' (e.g. bloat/hives) and some are other kinds of reactions which may include some degree of that but may also have other effects (rashes and asthma and allergies are common protein-reactions that many people don't realize). Low-level 'reactions' like mild inflammation can contribute to tons of diseases which people would think they got "just because." Like cancer, and other things.

GMO can take pieces of protein from a fish and a tomato and mix them into corn. And then add some elements including chemicals, that allow the plant to absorb (...the plant you eat...) massively more toxic chemicals without dying (such as bug killer). The human body then gets this new protein and other elements, which in the history of human evolution the body has never seen anything like of course, so is unlikely to have everything in place for recognizing and dealing with.

How it react is: "Nobody knows." Because GMO seed sellers prohibit any testing, and they basically own the loyalties of the regulating agencies, who see no need to require that for the sake of human health either. There has been only one test done and the results were not healthy at all, but I don't have the ref/link so never mind. The real issue is that it makes 300 million people in the USA "lab rats" for the chemical experiment of a mercenary global corporation.

I could go on about how we already are with modern gluten grains but never mind. Most of the rest of the 1st/2nd world countries have outlawed GMOs.

Plant breeding is different. It is more like when two people who are both very beautiful marry and have beautiful children, as opposed to just randomly breeding with all us homelier mucks. :-) In the plant world there's lots of details that botanical science can flesh out about the qualities of a plant. Until now, we've been stuck with "eyeball and taste-bud observation" and of course some obvious observations about growth. It often takes a really long time, many seasons or many years even, to try and get just the right combination of things.

But newer science is making our ability to look at those details in a plant much better and faster. So now we are better able to see just which plant is "the most beautiful" according to the desire, and then breed that with the other most-beautiful plant according to the desire, so their babies are really gorgeous. And it doesn't take us many seasons or years to figure it out.

By contrast, if our 'human breeding' were GMO, it would be a woman implanted with an embryo that mixed human, horse, shark, and two kinds of silicon objects, into a new kind of mutant abomination. Sure, it is probably a very lovable abomination with many fine qualities... But since its makeup is not actually native to our evolutionary experience, even carrying the child could have weird or dangerous effects on the mother. When it's born, it is classified as an animal not a human, and we eat the mutant. Ergh. Doesn't seem very healthy... but who knows, without testing?

That is good news. Still needs to be proofed with time. The old techniques are still the best for now, till this one proves itself to be better.

By the way, I have seen two beautiful parents make a not so beautiful child and the opposite also. Lets not haste to conclusions just yet.

bitsforbytes
That is good news. Still needs to be proofed with time. The old techniques are still the best for now, till this one proves itself to be better.

By the way, I have seen two beautiful parents make a not so beautiful child and the opposite also. Lets not haste to conclusions just yet.

That is exactly the point of this stuff. There's tons of "details" in what goes into any biological or botanic creature. So far we've been limited to the more visually-obvious for example, but now we are able to see far more elemental details far more quickly than ever before. Now we'll be able to see into the genetics that will determine such things far better.