Monsanto

[cff]

I attended a conference in Omaha Nebraska this past week and one of the guest speakers was a seed farmer from Monsanto. One thing I thought was very interesting was the way Monsanto uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to finger print billions of hybrid seeds at a time.



Only the seeds with the correct genetic finger print are planted for seed crops. An example would be high oil soy beans; the genetic marker for high oil content would have a finger print found by the MRI, several other traits could be linked or stacked during the breeding process with the gene for high oil content such as specific disease resistance / drought tolerant ect ect.



Some hybrid verities will have as many as 12 selected genetic markers that can only be found by using the MRI; other wise it would take years of cross breeding and field testing to get one or two markers. It's an interesting and some what scary way of mass breeding 100's of hybrid seed with a known predictable outcome.

[johno]

I like it better than engineering with synthetic or trans-kingdom genes. It would also be a sensible way to do traditional breeding if and when the technology is affordable, simply because of the space and effort saved.

[paquebot]

Just think about if that technology would have existed 60-70 years ago. We would have had simply Wisconsin rather than Wisconsin 55! It wouldn't have taken 55 lots to come up with that famous tomato.

Martin

[cff]

Can you image if this type of technology was available to everyone?

paquebot said:

Just think about if that technology would have existed 60-70 years ago. We would have had simply Wisconsin rather than Wisconsin 55! It wouldn't have taken 55 lots to come up with that famous tomato.

Martin

[peppereater]

Short of having that technology at home, could you imagine if you could custom order seed prepared by Monsanto or some lab, where you order a specific combination of gene's and they prepare it?

[PapaVic]

that would be great!

[Alan]

Except I wouldn't put it past them to throw some goat or octopus genes in there just for fun, along with a copyright, some other transgenes, and maybe the terminator gene.


I won't lie though, this sort of technology is really exciting, I guess I just prefer to do the time tested thing of breeding the hard way perhaps, just something about playing the numbers and challenging nature and chance!

[peppereater]

admin said:

Except I wouldn't put it past them to throw some goat or octopus genes in there just for fun, along with a copyright, some other transgenes, and maybe the terminator gene.


I won't lie though, this sort of technology is really exciting, I guess I just prefer to do the time tested thing of breeding the hard way perhaps, just something about playing the numbers and challenging nature and chance!

That did occur to me. I'd hate to support Monsanto to begin with, (they would be the first to realize this concept) and not only would they incorporate the terminator gene, they'd have the ability to spell "Monsanto" on the skin of each tomato through a pigmentation process.

[kctomato]

[plantsnobin]

I just watched the French documentary on Monsanto-very interesting, in a scare the shit out of you way. A couple of years ago my daughter and I took a trip to Missouri Botanical Garden with the Indiana Native Plant and Wildflower Society. Our tour guide was Kay Yatskievych. She does reasearch in South America on plants, and is author of Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers. A nice woman, but as we were walking to the 'Monsanto Building', I asked her if she thought there was anything wrong about that-she said she didn't feel they tried to control what she does. This building is where all the pressed specimens are kept, an incredible wealth of botanical info. Monsanto controlled. I seriously doubt they will stop with 'food' crops. If Kay finds plants that are of interest to the field of medicine, I'm sure they will be patented by Monsanto. Or, they will be destroyed so no one can use them. But then maybe I am just paranoid.