The New York Times has a story about how "plant breeders, by nature, are patient people. It can take them years or even decades to perfect a new variety of fruit or vegetable that tastes better, grows faster or stays fresh longer.
"But their work has taken on a new urgency in the face of an increasingly erratic climate. Recent floods left more than a third of California’s table grapes rotting on the vine. Too much sunlight is burning apple crops. Pests that farmers never used to worry about are marching through lettuce fields."
Solutions to these problems, the Times writes, "are likely to come from an array of research fronts that stretch from molecular gene-editing technology to mining the vast global collections of seeds that have been conserved for centuries."
The Times has a description of the developments taking place in this field, which you can read here.
- KC's View:
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There's been a lot of conversation over the years about the propriety and impact of genetic modification of food. But perhaps the state of the planet is such that it will be required if we're going ton continue to grow certain foods.
Go figure.
