![]() Kristin Houser is a science writer for several publications, including Freethink. “his would not be considered something different than what we’ve been doing in processing tomatoes in a commercial, professional research way for at least the last 70 years,” said Zach Bagley, managing director of the California Tomato Research Institute, which helped fund Mutschler-Chu’s research. However, because Mutschler-Chu used traditional breeding techniques to create the pest-resistant tomatoes - rather than modifying them with genes from other species - they won’t need to go through the lengthy regulatory approval process for GMOs, and, when the fruits do hit the produce aisle, they could be more quickly accepted by consumers. Credit: Marco Verch Professional Photography via CC-BY-2.0 Once seed companies have access to Mutschler-Chu’s elite lines, they’ll need to cross breed the plants with their own varieties of tomatoes - that process could take up to five years, so we won’t be seeing the tomatoes in stores for a short while yet. They do, however, ward off a variety of insect species. The lines she is now preparing to make accessible to seed companies contain just 2.5% of the wild tomatoes’ DNA, so they don’t have its undesirable flavor and other negative traits, such as small fruit and too many branches. pennellii isn’t tasty, though, so Mutschler-Chu and her colleagues set out to find the genes responsible for the production of acylsugars in the wild plant and breed them into a type of tomato people like to eat. When insects land on the plant, the acylsugars cause them to start grooming themselves excessively and quickly fly away rather than feeding. ![]() The Peruvian variety excretes droplets of sugar compounds, called “acylsugars,” from tiny hairs on its surface. However, a variety of tomato native to Peru, Solanum pennellii, doesn’t have this problem. Insects can damage tomatoes directly by their eating leaves and fruit, but if the insect is carrying a virus, it can also infect the plant with the virus, causing even worse damage. She’s now just a couple of months away from wrapping up the project and giving seed companies access to 20 elite lines of naturally pest-resistant tomatoes. ![]() E Remove pesticides from farm run off water with plants and air. E Determine how long pesticide will remain toxic in different soils and in different environments. More than 30 years ago, Martha Mutschler-Chu, a plant breeder and geneticist at Cornell University, set out to develop a tomato that would be naturally pest-resistant, minimizing or even eliminating the need for pesticide sprays. Investigate how well natural materials absorb pesticides and herbicides from soil. While they can’t do anything about the weather, farmers can protect their crops from pests by spraying them with chemicals that kill the buggers - but those pesticides can also kill off-target species, contaminate soil and waterways, and sometimes threaten farmers’ health. The challengeįarming is a risky business - just one late frost, pest infestation, or extreme weather event can decimate a crop, evaporating a farmer’s profits. Is the Genetic Literacy Project a corporate ‘front’? GLP responds to ongoing false allegations from US Right to Know / Organic Consumers Association / SourceWatch / Baum Hedlund / Church of ScientologyĪ tenacious plant breeder has developed more than a dozen new lines of naturally pest-resistant tomatoes - foreshadowing a future in which farmers won’t need to rely on pesticides to protect their crops.GLP Integrity Policies: Privacy, Conflicts of Interest, Verification, Fact-Checking Standards and Corrections.Mission, Financial Transparency and Governance.We are committed to ensuring it hears our concerns about the environmental impacts of these chemicals and implements much-needed regulations. The Canadian government is reviewing three widely used neonics. We want Canada to do the same, to join the growing global movement to ban neonics and save the bees and other pollinators. This decision is a victory for the bees and the environment. Recently, the European Commission voted to ban all outdoor agricultural uses of neonics by the end of 2018. They are, along with multitude of other invertebrates, the backbone our ecosystems. One-third of our food supply relies on pollinators like bees. Neonics have unintended and wide-reaching ecological consequences, including contributing to a decline in bee and monarch butterfly populations. Since 2010, a growing body of international scientific evidence has shown neonics are dangerous to biodiversity. They’re primarily used to control pests on agricultural crops like corn and soy, but they are also found on Christmas trees, houseplants and more. Neonicotinoid pesticides, also known as neonics, are the most widely used insecticides in the world.
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