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by asdff
1708 days ago
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I'm glad you brought up the Canvendish, what an excellent recent example of the success of genetic tools in agriculture. There are other bananas that are resistant to panama disease but have other traits such as thinner skin that make them unfit for export. In fact, researchers have turned to genetic modification, and created a Cavendish variety that is resistant to Panama disease by introducing a blight resistant gene from a blight resistant wild banana. (1) This is just one example of how we can use genetic tooling to do what would otherwise take a breeder a lifetime of work in the field with a single cross and generation of progeny per growing season. You can develop GM crops that harbor genetic diversity. You can mutagenize them to introduce random variation and yield a variety of novel phenotypes that can adapt to any sort of conditions. You can conduct analysis using statistical models to identify the genes and regulatory mechanisms involved with these phenotypes. You can introduce these phenotypes into your cultivar. You can cross your cultivar with wild landraces to introduce more diversity, and cross these with geographically distant populations to introduce more divergent and diverse genetic compositions than what would even be possible among the landraces. To put it simply, the box has been opened, and you can do pretty much anything to shape and alter the plant with genetic tooling. 1. https://www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/World-first-Panama-disease... |
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Which was my point they tried GM and failed, maybe the next attempt works but at this point it’s not a fast process.