If you have ever had a good risotto, you most likely had it with arborio rice. This variety is ideal for that kind of dish based on the consistency of its grains when cooked. But the popular Italian variety is also susceptible to a deadly fungus, Pyricularia oryzae. Every year, the fungus destroys an amount of rice that could have fed 60 million people.
A potential solution came in 2017 with the development of RIS8imo, a variety of rice resistant to the dangerous fungus that has many nicknames such as rice blast, rotten neck, and rice seedling blight.
The variety was created with the revolutionary genetic technique CRISPR-Cas9. […] In Italy, it is illegal to plant genetically modified organisms (GMOs) but this variety of rice is not a GMO.
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The rice field in this case was 28 square meters (302 square feet), planted on May 13. It was fenced and surrounded by another fenced field of 400 square meters (4,306 square feet) field to make sure that no rice could be spread beyond either through the weather or animals.
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Just over a month later, on June 21, the field was destroyed.
In a press release, the creators of the rice, Vittoria Brambilla and Fabio Fornara, Università Statale di Milano explain how the goal of their research is to create sustainable agriculture that is not dependent on chemical fungicides. The work on the site came after a broad agreement from the local community and other stakeholders.
“As publicly-funded scientists we express shock and sadness at having suffered this unjustified violence, the result of obscurantism and anti-scientific impulses,” Brambilla and Fornara stated.
