The ear of fresh corn today is packed with 18 rows of plump kernels. But did you know that this wasn’t what it looked like before? That’s right. It is thanks to the power of genetic engineering that we’ve been able to make ears of fresh corn flavorful and more packed, compared to its ancestor, which only had 6 to 8 rows of kernels, and looked like “something you’d weed out of your lawn than something you’d put on the grill.”
The juicy version we eat today is the result of thousands of years of breeding and selection. The same is true for most every modern crop: They have been genetically modified over and over to feed an ever-growing, urbanized population.
But it seems that we have to genetically modify our food once again, because of the worsening condition of our planet.
The old strategies of improving size and yield are no longer enough. A couple centuries of human greenhouse emissions have caught up with us. With the world likely to get at least 2 degrees Celsius warmer, on average, by the middle of the century, and with extreme storms, rains, and drought already happening more frequently, growing conditions are changing faster than farmers and their crops can adapt. Zachary Lippman, a professor of genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, likens the situation to an arms race—only this time around we are competing against ourselves.
The question is, how do we plan on doing it?
More details about this over at Nautilus.
What are your thoughts about this one?
(Image Credit: keem1201/ Pixabay)