First Genetically Modified Strawberries to Hit Stores Soon
They’ll likely have an easy regulatory road.
A few years back, the potato company J.R. Simplot hit on a way to bring genetically modified foods to market with a system that encounters far less regulatory oversight. The company announced this month that it will be working with the California-based Plant Sciences, Inc. to bring this style of gene-edited strawberries to market within a few years.
What Simplot is doing is technically called gene editing, using the technology known as CRISPR. Unlike with other GMO manipulation, gene editing doesn’t bring in genes from any other species; it simply switches off certain genes within the plant. In potatoes, CRISPR was used to turn off the gene that causes cut potatoes to turn brown when exposed to oxygen.
Because this type of work doesn’t bring in genes from any other species, it can be interpreted as a sort of accelerated technique of selective breeding, which is fully legal. Theoretically, turning off that potato-browning gene could be done through crossbreeding; it would just take a very long time and be fairly inefficient. Because gene editing can be seen in this way, the USDA has said that it will not regulate gene-edited crops in the same way as other GMOs, which greatly smoothes the path for CRISPR crops to make it to market.
This particular strawberry is a collaboration between Simplot and Plant Sciences, and according to the Associated Press, the goal is to maximize yield and resistance to waste. In a press release, the company notes the high volume of waste in strawberry production, and it says that CRISPR editing can help extend shelf life and possibly reduce the amounts of water and pesticides needed to grow these strawberries. As with crossbreeding, CRISPR editing could assist by removing a fruit’s vulnerabilities to, say, drought, or a particular pest—at least in theory.
The two companies say they expect to make these strawberries available to purchase within a few years.
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].First Genetically Modified Strawberries to Hit Stores Soon
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
November 16, 2021
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
this is useless and does not help with my project for GMOs for strawberries. Thumbs down
I gained more information about potatoes than strawberries.
there is no such thing as gmo strawberries. Your headline is wrong