[favoritecolor]

This is a pretty brute force method for genetic engineering -- and yet it works! It's essentially just pressing fast forward on evolution.

But this is wildly inefficient. Plant genomes are often ridiculously large (e.g., the onion genome is 4X the size of the human genome), so you either have to throw a bunch of mutagen on the plant (which can cause off-target, toxic mutations) and/or plant a bunch of seedlings to get the plant you're looking for.

New methods often include introducing new genes with mutations through agrobacteria, gold nanoparticle bombardment, etc. without needing to actually mutagenize a plant genome. Do your mutagenesis on a specific gene in bacteria, and then test those random genetic variants in plants.

But for me, what is more exciting is a relatively new shift toward targeted mutagenesis directly in plants. For example, CRISPR can be used to target mutations to specific genes in situ (and not insertions or deletions -- useful point mutations through the use of base editors) [0]. I think the directed evolution of plants will be a pretty fruitful (lol) area of research in the future, and I'm excited to see where that field goes. Gotta love new plants!

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-020-00288-9 -- see section "Mutagenesis and directed evolution"

[asdff]

Getting the mutation is not an issue, its understanding what the mutation does to the organism that's the hard part, and that still usually means planting a bunch of seedlings to screen for favorable progeny.

[dls2016]

> plant a bunch of seedlings to get the plant you're looking for

This happens anyway, based on my understanding of fruit tree breeding at US land-grant universities.

[awild]

Hop breeding works that way, plants are actively bred. The ones that are agronomically useful will see bigger and bigger plantings until they are tried at market. When they either fail or establish themselves (to the point of completely overtaking the market like citra did).

With wine it's similar so I suspect its just how most of this works.

https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2021/3/3/how-a-hop-ear...