The case for engineering our food

Main points:

• The hostess Pamela Ronald, is a plant geneticist whose goal is to enhance plant resistance to disease and environmental stress.
• She describes that almost all crops today are genetically modified through traditional breeding and mutation, and that these now modern methods are more precise.
• Her and her team isolated the XA21 gene that helps rice fight a harmful bacteria and put it into rice plants that couldn’t resist the disease before.
• She emphasized the Sub1 flood-tolerance gene: meaning that the different rice varieties carrying it survive prolonged flooding and yield three times more grain under submergence
• In the 1950s, Hawaiian papaya was saved by splicing virus DNA into its genome, preventing ringspot infection in nearly 80% of crops
• She discusses "Bt eggplant" in Bangladesh, which cuts the pesticide use to zero by engineering placing pest-resistance directly into the plant
• Golden Rice which is engineered with beta‑carotene, could prevent blindness and death from vitamin A deficiency, although people are still against testing it.
• She emphasizes greatly that genetic engineering has been continuously studied and found safe by major scientific bodies, and warns that the fear of genetic engineering denies vital tools to help those in need.