Posted by larry_jew on 8/27/2010 2:26:00 PM (view original):
Posted by robusk on 8/27/2010 12:02:00 PM (view original):
More bad news for food:
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/genome-breakthrough-heralds-new-dawn-for-agriculture-2063308.html
Don't you mean bad news for starvation?
Go **** a whole foods.
They slightly exaggerate the potential impact but it is in fact a step in the supposed correct direction of growing grain demands (not if you ask me though).
The most important thing is that the genome is a public release. If one of the big seed companies (money grabbing whores) had done so and patented the thing - something they love to do on gene by gene basis - then it would have been a huge step backwards.
The genome sequence still doesn't really address the major problem facing modern crop farming....which is a lack of diversity. Unfortunately this genome is probably going to make the issue even worse in the long term. If farmers are better able to "remove" diversity from their crop's genome as they strive to make the most uniform and "healthy" strain for the conditions they want to mass produce the food in then we may all be doomed. Bit melodramatic but as highly specialized uniform crop is much more likely to suffer a global meltdown if conditions change or more likely a bug finds a "workaround," as they inevitably do (it isn't termed an arms race for nothing), then things could go very badly.