New “Speed Cloning” Could Help Genetically Engineer Disease-Resistant Crops Even Faster
Scientists have gotten pretty good, over the past few decades, at splicing in beneficial genes to crops.
By using techniques like CRISPR gene editing, agricultural scientists can create GMO crops for all kinds of scenarios: sure, mostly enhanced yield or resistance to pesticides, but also the capability of surviving in drought or higher temperatures or poor soil. That process, though, takes time: according to the Morgridge Institute for Research, the process is extremely expensive and can take more than a decade.
That’s just not fast enough to cope with a rapidly changing planet, with diseases that can drift and take hold within days. So researchers at the John Innes Centre, a British plant science facility, came up with what they’re calling AgRenSeq. (The name is a combination of association genetics and R gene enrichment sequencing; if any of that makes sense to you, or if you want it to, you can read the full study here.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xefrjg5Y_Ug
It is, as Popular Science calls it, a sort of “goggle” for wild varieties of crops, with wheat being the tested crop. Essentially, it provides a large searchable database of similar wild crops, allowing scientists to quickly find the section of the genome they want to sequence, and then sequence only that section. So if you want to solve a problem of, say, a particular fungal disease in wheat, you could find a variety of wild wheat that seems immune from that disease. Then you’d search the database to figure out what part of the wheat genome usually deals with resistance to fungal disease, and then sequence your fungus-proof wild wheat—but just that part.
The researchers say it could dramatically reduce both the time and the cost of genetic engineering, from a decade or more to only months, and from millions of dollars to thousands. The process could, if it proves effective—this is just a proof of concept—make it much, much easier for scientists to cope with new diseases, new pests, and new problems.
Subscribe
0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest
Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].New “Speed Cloning” Could Help Genetically Engineer Disease-Resistant Crops Even Faster
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
February 22, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit