In the current era of rapid technological advance in reading and writing genomes, we advocate universal access to some safe modular variation in flower, leaf and color traits that can be operated without labs or restrictions by ordinary farmers and gardeners.
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In offering consumers the products of a new technology, we should feed their economic opportunities as well as their bellies. To do this, we should seek to preserve their agency, offer a diversity of choice, and foster participation, understanding and community. We should listen and act on their feedback…consumer genetic variation must come to the people, just as the informatics revolution put personal computers in every home rather than invite the public to submit punchcard programs at the mainframe.
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The benefits of putting a set of variation and selection lines back into the hands of farmers and the gardening public would go beyond creating a social license to operate for gene technologies. There are many questions about local growth conditions and consumer preference that could be crowdsourced for participatory feedback.
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We have been mutating, crossing and selecting plants for tens of thousands of years. To reject gene-edited food as unnatural is as nonsensical as denying agriculture. It is time to reconcile ourselves to our roles in human– plant coevolution and redomesticate plant domestication in our own homes.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Finally accepting plant domestication
