How a 'Holy Grail' Wheat Gene Discovery Could Keep Feeding a Warming Planet (theguardian.com) 90
"Wheat now provides 20% of the calories consumed by humans every day," writes the Guardian. Unfortunately, "Thanks to human-induced global heating, our planet faces a future of increasingly severe heat waves, droughts and wildfires that could devastate harvests in future, triggering widespread famine in their wake.
"But the crisis could be averted thanks to remarkable research now being undertaken by researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich." They are working on a project to make wheat more resistant to heat and drought. Such efforts have proved to be extremely tricky but are set to be the subject of a new set of trials in a few weeks as part of a project in which varieties of wheat — created, in part, by gene-editing technology — will be planted in field trials in Spain. The ability of these varieties to withstand the heat of Iberia will determine how well crop scientists will be able to protect future arable farms from the worst vicissitudes of climate change, and so bolster food production for the Earth's billions, says the John Innes Centre team....
"A key tool in this work was gene editing, which allowed us to make precise changes in wheat DNA. Without it, we would still be struggling with this. It has made all the difference."
This was an especially difficult struggle because wheat genetics includes multiple ancestral genomes, the article points.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.
"But the crisis could be averted thanks to remarkable research now being undertaken by researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich." They are working on a project to make wheat more resistant to heat and drought. Such efforts have proved to be extremely tricky but are set to be the subject of a new set of trials in a few weeks as part of a project in which varieties of wheat — created, in part, by gene-editing technology — will be planted in field trials in Spain. The ability of these varieties to withstand the heat of Iberia will determine how well crop scientists will be able to protect future arable farms from the worst vicissitudes of climate change, and so bolster food production for the Earth's billions, says the John Innes Centre team....
"A key tool in this work was gene editing, which allowed us to make precise changes in wheat DNA. Without it, we would still be struggling with this. It has made all the difference."
This was an especially difficult struggle because wheat genetics includes multiple ancestral genomes, the article points.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for submitting the story.
I can see the product now... (Score:5, Funny)
Not frosted but, CRISPR Mini Wheats!
Re: I can see the product now... (Score:5, Informative)
You anti-GMO guys are funny. Actually the kiwi never had a natural diversity. In fact, nothing about it is natural at all.
https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org]
Indeed, in such a scenario as you described, GMO is a totally viable solution:
https://foodinsight.org/how-gm... [foodinsight.org]
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You anti-GMO guys are funny. Actually the kiwi never had a natural diversity. In fact, nothing about it is natural at all.
https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org]
Indeed, in such a scenario as you described, GMO is a totally viable solution:
https://foodinsight.org/how-gm... [foodinsight.org]
Whatever you do, don't mention Norman Borlaug and what he did with wheat. These folks will go insane trying to explain how what he and others did isn't the same thing as GMO.
Re: I can see the product now... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh for sure, and he puts it rather brilliantly:
https://reason.com/2000/04/01/... [reason.com]
Reason: Why do you think people still listen to Ehrlich? One can go back and read his doomsday scenarios and see that he was wrong.
Borlaug: People don't go back and read what he wrote. You do, but the great majority of the people don't, and their memory is short. As a matter of fact, I think this [lack of perspective] is true of our whole food situation. Our elites live in big cities and are far removed from the fields. Whether it's Brown or Ehrlich or the head of the Sierra Club or the head of Greenpeace, they've never been hungry.
Reason: You mentioned that you are afraid that the doomsayers could stop the progress in food production.
Borlaug: It worries me, if they gum up all of these developments. It's elitism, and the American people are vulnerable to this, too. I'm talking about the extremists here and in Western Europe.In the U.S., 98 percent of consumers live in cities or urban areas or good-size towns. Only 2 percent still live out there on the land. In Western Europe also, a big percentage of the people live off the farms, and they don't understand the complexities of agriculture. So they are easily swayed by these scare stories that we are on the verge of being poisoned out of existence by farm chemicals.
Bruce Ames, the head of biochemistry at Berkeley, has analyzed hundreds and hundreds of foods, including all of the basic ones that we have been eating from the beginning of agriculture up to the present time. He has found that they contain trace amounts of many completely natural chemical compounds that are toxic or carcinogenic, but they're present in such small quantities that they apparently don't affect us.
Greenpeace is perhaps the biggest enemy of the green revolution, and especially GMO. Yet their reasoning is not even the slightest bit based on science, unless it's junk science.
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Ah forgot to quote this bit as well:
Reason: But the Cornell researchers went ahead and published their paper on the effects of BT corn pollen on monarch butterflies in the laboratory.
Borlaug: Several of us tried to encourage them to run field tests before it was published. That's how science gets politicized. There's an element of Lysenkoism [Lysenko was Stalin's favorite biologist] all tangled up with this pseudoscience and environmentalism. I like to remind my friends what pseudoscience and misinformation can do to destroy a nation.
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Yet their reasoning is not even the slightest bit based on science, unless it's junk science.
Then show us some of the junk science, please. I guess we are all interested.
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Both wrong.
Banana are hundreds of types. Those with big seeds still exist. And those with small (nearly non existing) seeds always existed, too.
Corn is like it is since 10,000 years, and has nothing to do with wheat whatsoever.
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Are you claiming that modern corn isn't the result of selective breeding?
SMH...
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Re:I can see the product now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Plants are also a safer, cheaper, & more sustainable way to produce some pharmaceuticals & other complex materials. That can only be done with GMOs.
Using GMOs for the common good, i.e. preventing widespread hunger & famine, sounds like a good idea to me. Count me in.
Re: I can see the product now... (Score:3)
Another area of industry like pharmaceuticals where if something is of critical importance like this it should be an option that it can be purchased by the government for the purpose of mass manufacture and use. The company at hand can be paid some cost of development+ price, a prize amount as it were.
Re:Don't worry, Greenpeace will save us (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what prompts you guys to mod this as troll, Greenpeace is very open about the fact that they want to kill off GMO technology entirely. They know that the intent of golden rice is to prevent the type of medical condition depicted in that picture, and they don't care. Their reasoning for banning GMO has nothing at all to do with science, it's driven purely by ideology. In fact, if you look at their history, they change their argument every time the science shows they're wrong. In particular, for Bt crop, their argument was first that Bt crop doesn't produce enough of the protein that kills invertebrates. Then after the science showed they were wrong, they changed their argument to being that it produces too much of it.
No matter what, you can't win with them. If hypothetically, somebody indisputably scientifically proved that GMO would solve every ecological problem known to mankind, Greenpeace would still oppose it. They've demonstrated that repeatedly.
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The intent of golden rice is to sell gmo seed.
No! Golden rice [wikipedia.org] was created by a non-profit with the intent of reducing the incidence of vitamin A deficiency in countries in which rice was a staple. That a second, more 'productive' version was later created by Syngenta (based off the original) doesn't change the original intent, or the licensing.
And Greenpeace have a valid perspective on this.
They have a perspective on this, but it's most certainly not a valid one. Their objections have done far more harm than good. No organisation, generally, is purely good or bad, and this includes Greenpeace. Whils
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Their objections have done far more harm than good.
You mean the objections Greenpeace is officially expressing here: https://www.greenpeace.org/sou... [greenpeace.org]
You must be an idiot then.
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Greenpeace has a history of being a Soviet psyop against Western market-based societies.
To be fair, they killed clean nuclear for over thirty years, so they're not stupid. Ironically they outlasted their sponsor.
But if you think a science argument will sway them then you're not getting what their goals are.
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There never was "clean nuclear", or you have an idiotic definition of "clean".
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Could you show such arguments?
Never heard such nonsense.
Seems in your country there is a new enemy: Greenpeace.
somebody indisputably scientifically proved that GMO would solve every ecological problem known to mankind, Greenpeace would still oppose it. They've demonstrated that repeatedly.
Yes obviously. Because you missed to include one very important sentence: "In a healthy way for environment and mankind!
Hm (Score:2)
I thought a better holy grail would cell culture that produces grain without 90%+ of the rest of the plant and can be produced indoors in huge quantities with minimal energy consumption. Right now you need 1 square foot of land to produce 140 calories per year in wheat. A 1 square-foot solar panel can produce that much energy in less than one hour. Anyway, back to wheat, growing it in a farm means just to feed your fat ass 2000 calories a day for a year of pure wheat, we need to waste 3000 square feet of l
Re:Hm (Score:5, Interesting)
The gloom-and-doomers keep getting proved wrong, but there IS a limit to the carrying capacity of this planet, and we’re already starting to see unwanted global-scale effects of our activities. At some point, we’ll become resource limited, and the way the climate is going it sure looks like we’re pushing up against the limit. We certainly can’t grow our population by another order of magnitude using current food production methods. And the number of people denying this is going down every year as the evidence accumulates.
I dunno what the next step is, but it’ll almost certainly be some sort of food factory. Probably stacked automated factory farming and proteins grown in vats from engineered cell lines Maybe direct chemical synthesis, far down the road.
But it certainly won’t be dirt farming.
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Repeat after me:
I Will Not Eat The Bugs.
Re:Hm (Score:4, Insightful)
Repeat after me:
I Will Not Eat The Bugs.
Plenty of people eat prawns and oysters, which sit on the bottom of estuaries eating whatever crap (often literally) floats past them. Why are "bugs" any different? Powdered crickets, for example, are great in chilli con carne or spahetti bolognaise, and probably healthier to eat than budget feedlot-raised ground beef.
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Re: Hm (Score:2)
With modern tractor farming we only grow 20-50% of the food per acre that man yielded before tractor-based row-cropping, while using more herbicides.
Using good techniques, we could easily grow enough food using pre-1900s technology to support a population twice what we have now.
We are not limited by natural resources or technology, only by
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Are you using the royal we or are you talking about humanity as a whole? I have grown food with tractors (300 acres of potatoes). I am retired and have have a small garden. I recently bought a small tractor to prepare the land and cultivate with (the bank took all the big ones). After fixing up six 60 foot long rows I realized my tractor was too low to clear the top of the planted rows. 70 year old me is having to use a hoe to kill the weeds on those rows. I have adjusted my hiller to make smaller rows.
Re: Hm (Score:2)
I expect direct synthesis of certain foods relatively soon. It makes sense to me to synthesize simple food products that we normally extract from other foods, wasting food in the process.
I've seen an article where starch was synthesized. Starch being a chain of sugar, we can synthesize sugar too. I'd like to see healthy fats synthesized, but it may be hard to synthesize fat that isn't trans fat.
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You come close to the real dynamic here but don't quite hit it.
Population will expand to consume any increase in food production; on a global scale GMOs are only a short-term patch on the symptom rather than the cause. The real answer is population control, but that is taboo.
Education and standard of living (Score:2)
Population will expand to consume any increase in food production; on a global scale GMOs are only a short-term patch on the symptom rather than the cause. The real answer is population control, but that is taboo.
Population is already declining in many countries. It's not the food. It's just too expensive to have more kids. Women don't want that many kids when they have other options or get given a choice.
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Yes, I remembered. The math is calculated based on kcals not calories.
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Except: the land is not wasted. It is still there, just like that.
Less monocullture (Score:2)
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Increased yields could indeed be due to a dozen or more things than CO2, however the fact remains we have more and more wheat each year, thus far.
Also NASA says the earth has become five percent greener in last 20 years, for whatever reason. Plants in many places are "happier"
Re:what problem exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The little problem that we have not seen most of the actual, locked-in climate change at this time. At 1.5C, wheat is basically over in most climates where it currently grows, also because it will get much, much dryer and there will be much more variation. And we basically have already missed that 1.5C goal. Maybe we will make 2C, but it does not look good.
But yes, I know you are deep, deep in aggressive denial. Here is a tip: This does not make the problem go away, it just makes it harder to deal with it.
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Unlike you, I am not dumb.
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So reality is not conforming to what is between your ears and what you saying is happening, that is called being delusional.
Unlike you, I am not delusional. There is no wheat growing problem, in fact things have been getting better for growing wheat, the facts prove it.
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Nope. I do not have your level of ignorance combined with extreme arrogance. I can see what is and I can evaluate a prediction for validity. You cannot.
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You are deep in denial and give utterly ridiculous "reasons" why you are not. It is blatantly obvious. Your invalid Ad Hominem and lumping me in with somebody I do not even know and have never heard about is just that: Ridiculous and transparent.
Stop assuming you are right and then go looking for reasons why you are. That process is broken and cannot work. Instead look at what is _known_ and form your opinion based on that.
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Wheat production is increasing year by year.
Why do you try to deny this absolute fact?
What is wrong with you?
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Global wheat production was at a record high in 2021-2022 farming year, 778.6 million metric tons. Only 697 million ten years before that, and 582 million for 2000-2001,
Maybe wheat like higher temp and carbon dioxide. Mmmm, CO2, what plants crave.
Crop yields for almost everything we grow continue to increase every year, both in total and by hectare. And for wild vegetation even NASA scientists admits the planet is greening. I'm rather surprised they even allowed this research as it does not conform to the narrative of impending doom.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/g... [nasa.gov]
feeding the planet (Score:2)
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Actually it is profitable. Very profitable in fact. That's part of the reason why world hunger was already solved back in the 90s. We refer to this as the green revolution, which occurred in the 70s and early 80s. Today, hunger only exists in parts of the world where politics and war are preventing distribution. Although technically we had it solved in the 80s, communism was the last major reason for its existence, which largely ended around 1991. The world's last great famine itself was entirely due to pol
Quadrotriticale? (Score:2)
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Just have to keep the tribbles away from it...
Re:Hahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
Protein is the main source of energy in the human body and vegetal protein doesn't work.
Wow, you need to open a biology book. It's likely even a 4th grade biology book would be sufficient to correct your errors.
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This is funny, because guess how they make those vitamins?
Re: Cool (Score:2)
Why does it remind you of that?
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This is funny, because guess how they make those vitamins?
Perhaps your lack of understanding is considered funny by you. However it is just sad.
Yes: there are vitamins the human body needs, and which are not found in "ordinary vegan food". Note the word "ordinary". And that has nothing to do with the fact that _some_ animals can synthesize those vitamins: the human body can not.
Hint: mushrooms can be a solution to "break out fo the ordinary", mentioned above. Or milk products, but many vegetarians also do
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Can you get any more stupid? The problem is not global warming, it is global warming in a very short time. And we have _never_ had that before on this scale on this planet except when the big comet hit and most species died out. (Care for a repeat of that?) You must have been told that a million times by now and you have no counter-argument but repeat the same old invalid lies. You are willfully ignorant, nothing else.
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...because quite frankly, given the percentages, you are much more likely to offend someone by using "they" than by not using it.
Why would someone be offended by being called " they"? It's not as if they are being called something they don't identify as. The only reasons I can think of to be offended by "they" are bullshit culture war reasons.
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For the very same reason that someone would get offended by "he" or "she". If someone identifies as a male or female, "he" and "she" are a part of their identity i.e. "I'm not an unknown entity. I'm male/female.". It's a double-edged sword for all the PC fighters but if you'd like me to respect your "they", please respect my "he" or "she".
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What nonsense. "They" applies to both men and women. When you are in a mixed crowd that someone refers to as "they" are you offended? Only if you're a lunatic.
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Yes. I am personally offended if someone calls me "they". For me, "they" is and will always remain plural.
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"The only reasons I can think of to be offended by "they" are bullshit culture war reasons." https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] .
We all know this isnt about good grammar. If it as you would have started with that and even if it was, words change.
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Which of your yours is offended? Find it, and get it out of your mind, problem solved.
Is this nomenclature official now? (Score:1)
We're going to call GMO products 'gene-edited' so that liberals and Europeans will eat them?
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Celiacs (Score:1)
How about not using wheat as a filler in products. We don’t need more wheat, it’s already a poison for millions of celiacs. Edit out the gluten.
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How about not using wheat as a filler in products. We don’t need more wheat, it’s already a poison for millions of celiacs. Edit out the gluten.
Celiac disease is actually quite rare.
Thinking you're allergic to gluten is however, is surprisingly common.
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Your english sucks.
Celiac disease is the same as "allergic to gluten". Hint: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/... [www.nhs.uk]
I welcome our new Wheat overlords (Score:2)
May they always reign in sunshine!
Only time will tell if our new plant overlords will be beneficial or not. But, never the less, they are coming. Worship them. Eat them. Defecate them. Compost them.
The Great Circle of Life welcomes our new Wheat Plant Overlords!
Ah, Quadrotriticale! (Score:2)
Is it Gluten Free? (Score:2)
I'll have a Cow Burger with No Bun