The leading opponent of genetically modified food admits he's been wrong for two decades.
Mark Lynas a British "environmentalist",has been a key figure in the demonizing of genetically modified foods, a drive that certainly has contributed to the starving of the world's neediest. Now he admits he's wrong:
I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
I guess you'll be wondering-what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.
I'm happy to learn he's wised up about food. He's still a bit off on that science thingy though. The author of the slate article summarized Lynas' full remarks which include this bit of nonsense: "To vilify GMOs is to be as anti-science as climate-change deniers, he says.
============Next up, Lynas will discover that the "man-caused" global warming bull5h!t is really an effort by libtards to impose carbon taxes on us to fund the UN.
I heard about this the other day, good news for us i guess, now we just need him to help convince more poeple that we are not trying to kill our consumers with GMO crops.
That is good news....without GMO crops the production of all acres would drop and it wouldnt be long before food shortages would pop up...your right Cowman....we not so dumb....
Ya know cowman, I'm really enjoying having BJff neutered. It's nice not having to read his crap. Don't know or care what his gmo position is but we all know the DimRAT party is home to the envirowackos who have an anti-gmo bent. So he is an enabler in addition to being a PITA. LOL. Easy to put him on ignore, guys.
You're correct about educating the public. Apparently when CA voters were educated to the FACTs prior to voting on that libtard anti-gmo referendum in Nov, the voting public changed their minds. I'll grow what the end market pays me the most profit on and here at Ft. Cheddar, the local elevators and their customers buy RR, Bt and LL grains. More dairy guys using RR alfalfa, much to my surprise. I didn't think that one would catch on but it's a matter of personal choice as to how everyone wishes to farm.
======No doubt the libtard envirowackos will have their hissy fit on this, too.....
Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
January 2, 2012
Source: University of Nebraska CropWatch
Plant scientists long have known they can alter crops genetically to improve performance; they've been doing it thousands of years. But what if they could dramatically improve crops by leaving the genes themselves unchanged but instead change how they're expressed in a way that would be passed down to future generations?
That question is at the heart of research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Center for Plant Science Innovation, and the results so far are encouraging. The findings, expected to be commercialized in the next couple of years, could play a role in helping meet the world's dramatically increasing need for food, said Sally Mackenzie, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources plant scientist.
The work of UNL plant scientist Sally Mackenzie and others may lead to faster genetic improvement in crops. (IANR Photo)
Specifically, scientists focused on a gene called MSH1, short for MUTS Homolog1, which is present in every plant. They discovered that if they "silenced" that gene in some plants, their growth patterns changed dramatically—dwarfed, highly branched and behaving as if they have seen high levels of stress, including cold, heat, sale, drought and high light. Then, after they reintroduced the gene and crossbred it with a plant that wasn't altered, the crossbred plant showed signs of enhanced growth, vigor, lodge resistance, high biomass production and higher yield.
Those changes in some cases were huge: up to a 100% increase in above-ground biomass, up to a 70% increase in yield in sorghum, for example.
"We changed the way the plant is expressing its genes, even though we didn't change the genes themselves," Mackenzie said. The process is called epigenetics.
Mackenzie stresses these key points about her lab's work:
•It's not transgene-mediated modification, which is controversial in some parts of the world and heavily regulated, thus slow to reach the market.
• It's worked in several crops so far—not so-called model crops, but actual agronomically useful crops, most importantly soybean, sorghum and millet, and also tobacco and tomatoes.
• These changes can occur in just two generations of plants, rather than the 10 or more it can take for genetic modification to take hold. That's appealing given the sense of urgency in figuring out how to feed a world whose population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
The potential of epigenetics to improve other crops is unknown. It's possible that most of the potential already has been reached in corn, for example, because it's been heavily hybridized. Until now, scientists couldn't know what percentage of improvements in corn was due to genetic changes and what percentage was due, unwittingly, to epigenetics.
Besides soybean and sorghum, it seems likely there's great potential for epigenetics to improve crops such as cotton and dry beans.
"And if you could do this in rice and wheat, you could perhaps change the world," Mackenzie said.
"It's promising, but I don't want to overhype this," Mackenzie said. Yet to be determined is whether these effects will be stable and able to be scaled up as the techniques are commercialized and expanded to more fields and more crops.
"It's important we explore this for every potential it offers for addressing some of the challenges in agriculture," she added.
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