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posted by chromas on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the fruit-by-the-foot dept.

Meet the Ground Cherry, a CRISPR Creation That Could Be the Next Strawberry

Before corn was corn, it was a skinny grass that produced only a single row of kernels on each stalk. Long centuries of breeding turned it into a fast-growing plant with big, sweet, kernel-dense ears. In fact, most of the produce we're familiar with now took hundreds of generations to become what they are today. But now scientists, armed with powerful CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, are whittling down the domestication process to just a few years. Their first experiment is the ground cherry — a formerly wild, now-delicious fruit that has everything it takes to become the next strawberry.

In a paper [DOI: 10.1038/s41477-018-0259-x] [DX] published Monday in the journal Nature Plants, a team of researchers outlined how they used CRISPR to make the ground cherry (Physalis pruinosa) more suitable for agriculture. The sweet, tropical-flavored fruit, about the size of a cherry and nestled in a protective papery husk, is known as an "orphan crop" — one with some desirable characteristics but not enough to make farmers want to grow them. In the wild, the ground cherry is, well, wild — it grows all over the place and has small, sparse fruits that fall off the vine when they're ripe.

But by using CRISPR to edit out its unattractive elements, scientists think it may eventually be found in the produce section of the supermarket. "With some improvements, maybe it could become a specialty fruit crop in the United States and give farmers another fruit crop to grow that's not a tree," Joyce Van Eck, Ph.D., a plant biotechnology expert at the Boyce Thompson Institute and one of the paper's co-authors, tells Inverse.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:53PM (2 children)

    by edIII (791) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:53PM (#743063)

    Maybe on #2 WRT to fertilizers, maybe. There different methods of farming that can address that. The pesticide run-off, and fertilizer run-off from Walmart parking lots is not a myth. If you're saying there are no consequences from pesticide run-off, then who is trying to sell who a bridge again?

    On #1, you're just plain wrong. Neonicotinoids is causing a major problem with our food because we do in fact rely on bees to survive, along with other pollinating insects. Europe is observing a massive decline in insect species, especially moths, butterflys, etc. Are you trying to claim that none of these insecticides are responsible for any environmental problems?

    On #4, you're just plain wrong, again. By not purchasing non-organic GMO products from Big Ag, and instead purchasing from local Farmers Markets and local produce in grocery stores, you are in fact giving power back to your local farmers. With the Farmers Market that is guaranteed, albeit with trust that they are organic. Some of the bigger local farms you may have a somewhat of a point, but you seem to think they'are all the same. They're not. Nowhere is that more true than my purchase of eggs directly in my own neighborhood from a neighbor.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilSS on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:12PM (#743071)
    #1 Organic farming makes widespread use of Copper Sulfate for both fertilizer and pesticide. It's actually deadlier to bees than neonicotinoids.

    #2 I never said runoff is of no consequence. But if you think organic farms don't use fertilizers, and that they don't run off and cause problems (as you basically stated in your original post) you are sadly mistaken. Organic fertilizers can cause the same runoff issues as regular fertilizers.

    #4 Organics is a $65 Billion per year industry, growing at a rate of 5-7% per year. The top 3 organic producers? WhiteWave Foods Company, Hain Celestial Group, and General Mills. All huge companies. WhiteWave owns the largest producer of organic greens in the US. 50,000 acres. So yes, you are absolutely feeding the big ag machine. The "local farmers" is a fucking myth for 90% of the organic produce out there. Including many "farmers markets" sellers who source most of the stuff they sell from big distributors 2nds, the stuff not pretty enough to go to major markets.

    You remind me of the people who deride big pharma and their drugs, then buy supplements, most produced by big pharma companies.
    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:24AM

      by edIII (791) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:24AM (#743178)

      Including many "farmers markets" sellers who source most of the stuff they sell from big distributors 2nds, the stuff not pretty enough to go to major markets.

      Uh huh. I don't think we've been to the same farmers markets. If it was all non-viable produce from Big Ag, then why does it NOT look like non-viable produce from Big Ag? Why do they look like huge delicious apples? Big bundles of Kale? Big strawberries?

      The produce quality isn't in question, and ugly veggies and fruits still have the same nutrition. Meaning, why would Big Ag waste them when applesauce looks the same from an ugly apple? Almost all fruit and veggies fall into that category. You can make pressings out of any of those, and then sell them at a premium in Whole Foods. I would indeed be surprised if people were buying the ugly fruits and veggies to peddle to other people as-is, instead of making a processed food product of some kind.

      Also, you could get to know some farmers. I'm not saying there is zero corruption in all of them, but many I've bought from are indeed local and live in my county. You can visit many of the farms, with some of them having their own "factory outlet" style stores selling produce that literally was picked 200 feet away.

      You can't convince me that Farmers Markets are bullshit when I can visually see the evidence that they are not. Additionally, there are expensive certification programs (that not all participate in because of the expense) and those certify the organic and non-GMO nature of their crops and farming methods.

      I can see your point about organic produce going the way of Big Ag, but you've failed to convince me that Farmer's Markets are the equivalent. Although I can only speak for the Farmer's Markets that I've been to in Northern California, and the ones other family members frequent in Nevada and Texas.

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