Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie

[bunkie]

Posted by Ohio on IDIg. I find it interesting that they're taking wild and old varieties from other countries and using for traits for crossbreeding.

Monsanto is going organic in a quest for the perfect veggie

www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/new-monsanto-vegetables/

...Agriculture giant Monsanto may be best known for genetic modification—like creating corn that resists the effects of Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables you buy in the store, genetic modification is off the menu. Monsanto thinks no one will buy Frankenfoods, so the company is tweaking its efforts—continuing to map the genetic basis of a plant’s desirable traits but using that data to breed new custom-designed strains the way agronomists have for millennia. Here’s how it works—and how the results differ from GMO crops. Thanks to this cross between high and low tech, a new era of super-produce may be upon us. —Victoria Tang...

[synergy]

Worries me, they tweak the genetics of a plant even via breeding and you can bet they will rush to patent it .

[blackox]

What is there not to worry about? This is Monsanto.

[blueadzuki]

In theory, they could also use this to "whitewash" their genetic engineering plan. Say they find a variety of a plant which posseses a gene, that. combined with some other genes spread all over the species, have a chance to create something that really might make a major, non cosmetic, alteration to the global food/nutrition scene (on sort of a golden rice level). They do a little normal plant breeding and make a tiny amount of progress, enough to make the rest of the world sit up take notice, and get excited. Then they point out how slow progress is going to be with traditional breeding and how random (since the cross breeding gentics, being natural, are also a bit random) and how much faster and more reliably they can get to thier goal if they use the bioengeneering methods they already have well established to do the gene movements they want (after all, there is nothing in the methods of bioengeneering that requires the gene donor be from a completely different species, you could do it intaspecies as well (in fact, it's probably easier)). They either get permission (in those areas where genetically modified crops are currently banned or regulated.)Or do it anyway and let those who protest get mowed under by popular opinion among those interested in the matter. The world gets its new supercrop, and Monstanto gets not only a new product to market and control, but a lot of postive PR for genetic modification in general, possibly enough to make all of the hurdles in GM food (both the legal ones and the social ones) weaken to the point of vaporization.

[blackox]

So is this going to give them permission to label GMO's as organic?

[trixtrax]

More of the same, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, they are involved in GM tech, but Monsanto has swallowed up huge numbers of unmodified and yet important genetic crop diversity. As has Syngenta, BASF, Dow, and the rest of the pirates. The Problem lies in what happens once it lands in their seed vault. You sure know that you and I can't just request seeds for they've become "proprietary" - the property of a corporation. To think that the peoples seeds all over the world have become property of some foreign entity. Seems a lot like the continuation of the old colonization game.

Seed Ownership Map: www.msu.edu/~howardp/seedindustry.html

[nathanp]

Monsanto just wants to be the sole owner of every phase of agriculture, so everyone needs to depend on them for everything.

Seed, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer; gmo, non organic, organic; it's called monopoly, and our government is complicit.

[steev]

Subvert the dominant paradigm; just because it seeks to crush alternatives is no reason to accept it. Fuck 'em; they are pirates! They don't give a husky fuck for what serves people, on;y the computerized bottom line.

[Marches]

This is called marker assisted selection. It's not gm. Basically you breed with a resistant parent and then select the offspring that carry the resistance genes and discard the ones that don't.
It's like you or I selecting for disease resistance, only we'd have to observe the plants closely for a few years to select the resistant ones that would presumably be carrying the gene or genes whereas these guys are taking plant samples to a lab and looking to see which seedlings have the gene - a lot quicker, but out of reach of us amateur breeders.

Grape breeding programmes in the states and Germany have done this. A couple of varieties which were created from this process are Solaris and Regent.
Solaris derives resistance from Vitis amurensis but more importantly Seyval, a popular variety with strong resistance grown here that I'm intending to use myself. Seyval itself probably derives its great disease resistance from Vitis rupestris - an American species.

[12540dumont]

It may not be gm, but you can be sure that if it has a marker in it Monsanto will patent it, and burn your fields if they find "their" tomato gene in your tomato....