Ag Gene Editing
Cuban officials embrace GMOs to feed hungry population, but groups push back
[Editor's note: Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.] Cuban officials have announced the island is turning to ...
World’s largest pork producer to market hogs for pig-human organ transplants
Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, has established a separate bioscience unit to expand its role in supplying pig ...
How CRISPR gene editing will ‘supercharge’ agriculture
[J]ust as corn helped create these civilizations, these civilizations helped create corn through meticulous selective breeding. Today’s grain hardly resembles ...
GMO corn that resists cancer-causing aflatoxin showcases biotech’s life-saving potential
The creation of GM corn that neutralizes a cancer-causing toxin is a game-changer for human health. The method could be ...
Urban ‘treatment-free’ beekeeping leads to explosion in killer Varroa mites
[Editor's note: Toni Burnham runs one of 10 hives at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.] In this season of vitriol ...
A crucial climate mystery is just under our feet
[F]armers could turn their fields into giant greenhouse gas sponges, potentially offsetting as much as 15 percent of global fossil ...
Tree vaccine: ‘Weaponized’ GM virus could save Florida citrus industry from greening disease
Florida’s citrus growers are running out of time. Since 2005, when a deadly disease called citrus greening first showed up ...
Will organic community embrace gene editing if it restores ancient crops?
Precision genetic engineering techniques could bring back beneficial genes from wild relatives of crops without using foreign genes. The concept ...
Tomatoes resistant to fungus and blight developed by 94-year-old West Virginia scientist
Mannon Gallegly, West Virginia University professor emeritus of plant pathology, has made it his mission to develop a disease-free tomato ...
Monsanto is changing the way people eat — Using traditional breeding to make better fruits and vegetables
Monsanto is no one-trick GMO pony. Founded in 1901, the agricultural biotech company has fueled innovations in herbicides, pesticides, and ...
Will CRISPR plant breeding be used for good — Or mostly to drive corporate profit?
This rapid-fire timing [of agribusiness mergers] may have been a coincidence, but it also may be a sign of what’s ...
Infographic: The history of modern crop breeding — And how biotech seeds fit in
Biotech crops are an important milestone for agriculture as it continually improves to keep pace with the growing demand for ...
Agricultural biotechnology regulations are a mess — Here’s how Trump can unshackle innovation
For ideological or political reasons unsupported by data, and drawing on risk paradigms decades out of date, the US imposes ...
How ‘human bees’, biotechnologists and Gates Foundation are rescuing the African cassava staple
Neither conventional breeding nor genetic engineering alone can solve the viruses threatening Africa's key crop. Add some Gates' funding and ...
‘Opportunity or death knell’? Organic movement debates embracing CRISPR plant breeding
There have been public debates and whether certain novel plant breeding techniques (NPBTs) such as CRISPR, could be used within ...
New Zealand mulls using gene drive to eliminate country’s largest ecological threat: Weasel-like stoat
The stoat—a small, adorable, weasel-like mammal—is the one of the largest ecological threats in New Zealand. It’s a fierce invader ...
CRISPR crops focused on sustainable farming could soften African resistance to genetic engineering
[Nteranya Sanginga is director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.] The role of genetic engineering in agriculture and ...
Friendly foxes? What domesticating this ‘incorrigibly wild’ animal tells us about domestication of dogs
Cultures across the globe consider foxes to be incorrigibly wild. In both ancient fables and big-budget movies, these fluffy mammals ...
GMO disease-resistant bananas may be key to saving African staple
Banana is an important staple food crop feeding more than 100 million Africans, but is subject to severe productivity constraints ...
Beyond Golden Rice: Efforts abound to biofortify crops with vitamin A but regulatory hurdles high
[Editor's note: Giovanni Giuliano is research director at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.] Since ...
‘Natural age is over’: UK Royal Society chief heralds ‘new age of biology’ but warns of resistance
Venki Ramakrishnan grew up in India and knows all about malnutrition and poor health. Today as President of ... the ...
To expedite development of climate-resistant crops, Australia may have to relax gene-editing rules
Australia's classification of genetic modification is inhibiting the country's potential for future crop growth, according to a University of Western ...
Genetically selected people? ‘Polygenic scores’ could soon be used to guide human breeding
Today, for about $100, anyone can receive a million bits of information about their own genetic makeup from a company ...
Is Cargill supporting ‘removal of GMOs from planet’ by partnering with Non-GMO Project?
[Read the GLP profile of the Non-GMO project here.] [Cargill] recently partnered with the Non-GMO Project to help build a ...
Does most public research funding come from industry?
Who funds public research? UC Davis animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam says a funding analysis reveals that most of it ...
Which GM crops might be embraced by the organic movement — if sustainability matters
[Editor's note: Gerhart Ryffel is a professor at the Institute of Cell Biology, Essen University Hospital in Germany.] Several years ago, I ...
Palm reading: How genetic, epigenetic scans could boost palm oil yields, reduce environmental footprint
Palm oil is a commodity that generally evokes images of mass deforestation, human-rights violations and dying orangutans. In Indonesia and ...
