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.
Breeding new crops that can thrive under these assaults is a long game. Solutions 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.
It’s getting harder for cherry trees in some regions to get enough chill hours. One solution is the heart-shaped Cheery Cupid from International Fruit Genetics, which was recently acquired by Bloom Fresh International. (The scientists behind it also bred those popular grapes that taste like cotton candy.) These new cherries need only about one-third the usual amount of cold weather.
…
