[HN Gopher] A genetic modification boosts grain yields, shortens...
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A genetic modification boosts grain yields, shortens the growth
duration of rice
Author : zeristor
Score : 96 points
Date : 2022-07-23 10:25 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| zeristor wrote:
| A very impressive improvement, it would nice if taste and
| nutrients improved.
| adrian_b wrote:
| According to the description, there should be no changes in
| either taste or nutrients, which is a good thing.
|
| This kind of genetic manipulation, where the control of gene
| expression is modified for greater productivity, is much more
| promising than the attempts to make a plant produce different
| chemical substances than it was producing previously or behave
| differently in the presence of pesticides, because for the
| latter cases it is still very difficult to predict whether the
| genetic changes that are done will have only the desired
| effects, without other undesirable consequences.
| prirun wrote:
| > it is still very difficult to predict whether the genetic
| changes that are done will have only the desired effects
|
| This is true universally IMO.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Is there much research into doing the same for non food crop
| plants? Like for trees with the goal of faster reforestation?
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| There was a study shared here, a while ago, that found total
| nutritional content remained the same while total yields
| increased. In other words, all the efforts to increase yield
| have, so far, only increased the water content of the produce.
| Our vegetables, today, are fatter, but less nutritious. I expect
| this development will be similar.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Interesting anecdote: ever since "supply chain issues" became a
| thing, my local big name grocery stores (Kroger, etc.) have had
| much smaller but much more flavorful produce as they've
| resorted to sourcing more locally. Also more expensive, at
| first, and they go bad/get bruised much faster than they get
| sold, so they get marked down back to affordability within a
| few days of a shipment, until there are none left and the cycle
| repeats. I can't say I mind the change.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly benign
| as they're only increasing the expression of genes already found
| in the plant, not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze
| genes in strawberries. You still have to be careful in some cases
| (for example, humans have bred toxins out of many food crops by
| reducing expression levels over generations; the genes for toxins
| might still be there, i.e. potatoes, so you'd not want to trigger
| their expression accidentally).
|
| As far as nitrogen use, the claim is that these plants utilize
| nitrogen more efficiently than wild-type, so that you'd actually
| have to apply less nitrogen fertilizer and thus there'd be less
| nitrogen runoff from fields into lakes/streams etc.
|
| From the materials and methods:
|
| > "For nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) measurement, rice plants
| were grown in three independent field blocks supplied with 0,
| 100, or 200 kg N/ha. The study was performed in the Experimental
| Station of the Institute of Crop Science, CAAS, in Beijing from
| May to October, 2021. The N fertilizer was applied as urea at two
| stages: 40% at the tillering stage and 60% at the heading stage.
| Each line was cultivated in randomized plots with 20 cm spacing
| between rows and plants, and each plot contained at least 50
| plants per line."
|
| Oddly enough, the publisher makes materials and methods freely
| available but not results and discussion, go figure.
| kaiusbrantlee wrote:
| > This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly
| benign
|
| not by me. The rpecautionary principle is not followed in any
| GM process so invasive.
|
| Even breeding, which is a far less invasive form of genetic
| manipulation, has caused serious issues. The vast majority of
| commercial produce has had a lot of its nutrition bred out of
| it, for example.
|
| These kinds of long arc problems for the consumers of the food
| are not possible to track over anything but multiple
| generations (generations of the consumers of the food, not
| generations of the plants). They become all but impossible to
| track when the incentives of the systems at play essentially
| guarantee fuckery with regards to the gathering,
| interpretation, and dissemination of data that jepordizes
| profits.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The [pr]ecautionary principle is not followed in any GM
| process so invasive.
|
| While that is true, the precautionary principle is also not
| followed in any other process. It can't be, because the
| precautionary principle is nothing more than the statement
| "never do anything, not under any circumstances".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Phrased a bit nicer, the PP will always result in the
| decision to not do something, because you can never be 100%
| nothing bad will result.
|
| This is why people only apply PP to things they don't want
| done.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > the PP will always result in the decision to not do
| something, because you can never be 100% nothing bad will
| result.
|
| It's worse than that; the precautionary principle will
| tell you that you can't do [whatever it is], because
| there might be risks, and it will _also_ tell you that
| you can 't refrain from doing [whatever it is], because
| there might be risks to that too. It is completely
| logically incoherent, an intellectual embarrassment.
|
| The _only_ thing that determines what the precautionary
| principle will tell you to do is what question you choose
| to ask.
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| "Let other people put this stuff in their bodies, and see
| what happens to them".
| jiggawatts wrote:
| What "happens to them" is that their life is sustained by
| calories and nutrition they would not otherwise be able
| to afford.
|
| This kind of GMO is literally (not figuratively!) _life-
| saving_ technology.
|
| Just like the Haber process enabled fertilizer to be
| produced cheaply, saving billions of lives. Without it,
| India would have faced mass-starvation and its population
| would be half of what it is now.
|
| Now, you may wish to argue that the World has become
| overpopulated as a consequence, but then the question
| becomes: How would _you_ reduce the population?
|
| Most people would prefer to elevate societies through
| sufficient sustenance, comprehensive health-care, and
| stable governments. This seems to reliably result in
| negative or zero population growth.
|
| Your view seems to be that it's preferable to starve
| hundreds of millions to death, leaving the survivors in
| abject poverty to avoid... what... "meddling with
| nature"?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| That is a perfectly fine personal position to take, but
| an awful position to take as a society.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| >vast majority of commercial produce has had a lot of its
| nutrition bred out of it
|
| Citation please.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| _The vast majority of commercial produce has had a lot of its
| nutrition bred out of it, for example._
|
| As far as I am aware, this is very much untrue. Modern
| agricultural practices have indeed resulted in lower levels
| of nutrition in many fruits and vegetables--there was a bit
| of chat about this earlier in the year--but to say it has
| been "bred out" is not accurate.
|
| I'm no GMO hawk, but it seems entirely feasible that breeding
| or GMing produce to reduce dependency on various aggressive
| agricultural techniques offers the possibility of
| _increasing_ the nutritional content of produce, rather then
| diminishing it.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Easy to say when you're not going hungry.
| feet wrote:
| Why is a higher degree of invasiveness a bad thing?
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| OC misused the term invasiveness afaik in their previous
| statement.
| feet wrote:
| What did they mean in that case?
| msla wrote:
| > not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in
| strawberries.
|
| Oooh! Weird! Modifying my immune system to be able to fight
| cancer is "weird" too, right? Is there a good reason to use
| "weird" as a criterion in any of this? Because I like being a
| GMO organism who _isn 't_ dying of cancer, and people using
| "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer
| such treatments are going to be allowed.
|
| Remember: GMO isn't just about the "Organic" aisle at Amazon
| Whole Foods.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Well, your immune system is already capable of identifying
| and deleting cells that have escaped the normal cell cycle
| control and have become cancerous, but if there's damage to
| your immune system then it can lose that capability. Immune
| system damage can occur by many means: viral infections,
| chemical carcinogens, ionizing radiation, etc.
|
| Using gene editing technology to repair your immune system
| using a human template wouldn't be transgenic technology and
| is probably a relatively safe use of CRISPR gene editing, for
| example. Throwing in some shark genes to see what happened,
| because some species of sharks don't seem to get cancer IIRC,
| that would not be such a great idea I don't think.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If you were dying of cancer and told your doctor you planned
| on drinking a lot of tea I assume your doctor would be like
| "Yeah, sure - couldn't hurt." Drinking tea is not weird, lots
| of people do it, and there are no real risks because you're
| dying anyway.
|
| On the other hand, if you were like "I'm a biohacker, I'm
| going to genetically modify a virus to infect me and alter my
| immune system." Then I assume the doctor would say "Hey, let
| me get some people to take a look at that." Because that is
| weird and there are risks.
|
| "Weird" doesn't mean good or bad, it means unusual. Unusual
| things have the property that we don't do what they will
| cause, because they haven't been done much, because they are
| unusual. Genetic biohacking probably does have a greater
| chance of saving your life, or increasing your farm yields,
| but there are possible downsides to it that are not present
| in more mundane interventions.
| puchatek wrote:
| You and your clones are not gonna be spread around in nature
| and multiply uncontrollably. Also you and your clones are not
| gonna be eaten by predators and affect them in unforeseeable
| ways (i hope). Those differences matter to the people who
| worry about GMO technologies. The fact that the development
| is spearheaded by for-profit companies does not help either.
| justinpowers wrote:
| Well some ancient ape's "clones" have already spread around
| and multiplied uncontrollably. Who's to stay that this
| one's won't either?
| krageon wrote:
| Apes do not clone themselves, now or in the past. Unless
| you believe in fairy tales :)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is
| "weird" too, right?
|
| By adding genes? Definitely!
|
| > people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about
| how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed.
|
| It shouldn't. This is at most a concern for inheritable
| modifications.
| krageon wrote:
| > By adding genes? Definitely!
|
| It might be weird, but it works and it cures people of
| cancer. You quite simply cannot convince me that's not a
| positive result for everyone.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Did I say or imply I wanted to do that?
|
| Is the last line of my previous comment not clear enough?
| It's weird but there's no concern.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think "weird" here means "things that may have unexpected
| side effects." Cancer treatments have loads of those but we
| put up with them because death is worse. Eating strawberries
| and rice maybe exists at a different point on the risk
| continuum.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| This is true up to the point of food scarcity. Between
| geopolitical conflict and crop failures around the world
| this year due to severe heat waves, we're looking at a
| rough few years ahead of us for the global food supply.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| So instead of stopping the wars and the global warming
| which increases the chance of the heat waves, we should
| jump straight to genetic engineering? Is that the better
| solution?
| goatlover wrote:
| More realistic as stopping wars and climate change are
| much harder. The war in Ukraine hasn't ended despite the
| West's efforts. And CO2 emissions continue on a large
| scale despite all warnings.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to
| stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to
| stop a war.
|
| Not saying that Ukraine didn't have a right to be
| defended, but it should be pretty objectively obvious
| that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not
| intervened. This would have been unjust and a massive
| slap to the people of Ukraine, and arguably worse for the
| world in other ways - so I'm not saying that we shouldn't
| have supplied them.
|
| But we also can't claim we are doing what we can to stop
| the war: we're (at best) doing what we can to help the
| right side to win, while prolonging the war.
| undersuit wrote:
| Your immune system already fights cancer. Strawberries don't
| need to prevent their blood from freezing in the arctic.
| krageon wrote:
| Strawberries don't _need_ to exist in the first place.
| Nothing does. That doesn 't mean we don't want to cultivate
| them in places that may have a cold climate.
| echelon wrote:
| Frost resistance genes make for more arable land and
| greater crop yields. It's a desirable trait.
| brigandish wrote:
| Is there another situation where the words "fish",
| "antifreeze" and "strawberries" are used together to describe
| it and it doesn't sound weird?
|
| I'd be surprised if there were.
| jonplackett wrote:
| "I'm just popping down to the shops do you need anything?"
|
| "Yes, could you get some fish and strawberries? Oh and some
| antifreeze, I hear it's going to snow tomorrow"
|
| Seems totally normal to me. Nothing to worry about here...
| leeoniya wrote:
| reminds me of
|
| http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-
| fis...
| brigandish wrote:
| If you think it's normal to put those three things
| together on a shopping list then I have a bridge to add
| to it.
|
| Edit: I think this reads as if I'm disagreeing, whereas
| I'm piling in together!
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Are you not from the United States? Here, it's very
| common to find all of those things in one "super store".
| Walmart, Meijer in the Midwest, Fred Meyer in the Pacific
| Northwest, no doubt others in other regions of the
| country...
| vostok wrote:
| When I've talked to anti-GMO people in real life, they seem
| to (1) be anti-Roundup and similar pesticides more so than
| literally anti-GMO or (2) be anti-IP laws that won't allow
| farmers to use seeds from their last crop.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of farmers haven't "used seeds
| from their last crop" for well over a hundred years.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yes, the opposition is as much about things like patents on
| seeds and refusing to allow farmers to harvest seeds for
| their next planting season.
|
| There's also the problem of making plants resistant to
| herbicides, then applying more herbicides, so you get lots
| of herbicide runoff into lakes and streams. This is really
| more about upping sales for the chemical manufacturer.
|
| Also there are better methods for getting rid of weeds, I
| particularly like these field-crawling robots that identify
| weed seedlings with AI-vision and blast them with IR
| lasers.
| vostok wrote:
| That's a great point. I forgot to mention the IP issues.
| I hope you don't mind that I've edited my comment to
| include them.
| iroh2727 wrote:
| "Generally considered" may not be good enough given that that
| general considerment is corporately influenced (in terms of
| research funding, media, narratives inside the industry, etc.).
|
| I mean, I'm not an expert, but altering the expression of genes
| already present could be hugely dangerous in theory. These
| expressions are based on extremely precise feedback loops and
| interrelationships.
|
| I guess we could use a coding analogy: if you're using a
| statically compiled language and you make a code change that
| compiles and makes the unit tests you have in place pass, it
| probably works. But it might not... and in this case, what are
| the risks of the "might not," especially when we're layering
| these modifications on top of each other? And do we need to
| take such risks?
| scoopdewoop wrote:
| I'm really not a fan of Round-Up Ready GMOs, but breeding
| plants already alters their genes and gene expression.
| Horticulture has radically altered every food we eat. The
| natural world already can't sustain 7 billion people, there
| simply isn't enough nitrogen in the soil. Fertilizer is the
| reason you and I are alive right now, and its a huge source
| of greenhouse gasses, so yes, we do need to take such risks.
|
| A better coding analogy would be genetic algorithms versus
| intelligent fuzzing and manually patching.
| Gatsky wrote:
| This is an oddly anti-scientific view. We can test and
| evaluate the safety of the resulting GMO product.
|
| Some of the most important and useful pharmaceuticals are GMO
| products, produced by genetically modified cells in
| bioreactors. Do you have an issue with those?
|
| There is also the fact that we allow rampant and unregulated
| frankenfood production which is obviously harmful and purely
| profit driven (ie modern processed food production). But when
| it comes to GMO crops, which would improve the nutrition of
| the hungriest populations, suddenly it is too dangerous and
| must be banned. A privileged double-standard if there ever
| was one.
| [deleted]
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Questions I ask upon seeing these results:
|
| How much more fertilizer and water input is needed to realize
| these results? As these two resources become scarce, we should
| start thinking about yield per unit input rather than simply
| yield per acre.
|
| Is this new crop safe for humans and animals to eat? How do we
| know?
| bilsbie wrote:
| Worth asking but our time and land are still very important
| inputs that probably need to be the top considerations.
|
| And sunlight is one of the biggest inputs which is free and
| constant.
| bilsbie wrote:
| The safety thing is a weird question. Why is eating one pattern
| of DNA more dangerous than another?
|
| (Assuming you didn't modify it to produce novel proteins, etc)
| pulse7 wrote:
| "Why is eating one pattern of DNA more dangerous than
| another?" => Because some plants/animals have poisons, which
| is encoded in their DNA...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Generally people carve out potato blemishes, and blight
| spots, and rotten parts, and smelly parts and butchers will
| carve out cancerous growths. It's a standard practice,
| something that humans do, partly do to our sense of disgust.
| Our senses are not always correct, but most of the time it's
| a good survival adaptation to avoid rotten food and getting
| sick.
| xwdv wrote:
| It isn't. And that's why people who argue that GMO food is
| bad for you just don't get it. It's not the food that's bad,
| it's the business practices. The GMO food itself is perfectly
| fine to eat. In fact, humans have been genetically modifying
| food for centuries, we've just gotten much faster at it.
| imtringued wrote:
| >In fact, humans have been genetically modifying food for
| centuries, we've just gotten much faster at it.
|
| No we didn't, we have been conducting artificial selection
| for centuries, farmers just pick among the best varieties
| available to them. By your logic the act of buying GMO
| seeds is what modifies their genes rather than their
| production process.
| xwdv wrote:
| No, the artificial selection is genetic modification, on
| a slow scale.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why are the business practices bad? Details, please.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Suing small farmers for copyright infringement isn't very
| nice.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You are aware you're spouting bullshit there, right?
|
| First of all, copyright isn't the applicable IP; patents
| are.
|
| Second, no farmer has ever been sued for accidental
| contamination with patented GMOs. There have been cases
| where farmers deliberately tried to concentrate trace
| contamination, but the courts properly recognized the
| deliberate nature of that.
|
| These urban legend arguments are one of the reasons I
| view the entire anti-GMO movement with a very jaundiced
| eye.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Second, no farmer has ever been sued for accidental
| contamination with patented GMOs. There have been cases
| where farmers deliberately tried to concentrate trace
| contamination, but the courts properly recognized the
| deliberate nature of that.
|
| Yes, deliberate use of the patented gene/interaction.
| That's still suing small farmers, doing farmer stuff, for
| IP infringement.
|
| So it's not bullshit.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The farmer deliberately attempted to concentrate the
| gene. The only reason he would do this is to try to
| violate the patent. This was not an innocent action. Your
| argument here is like blaming a homeowner for catching a
| burgler.
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| Many explinations are available on the web, but it comes
| down to the dependence on these seeds and thus on the
| producer of them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| How is that different from use of hybrid seeds, which
| have been available since forever and don't breed true?
|
| The solution to dependence is to have multiple suppliers.
| One can always use an older variety of seed. If the
| complaint is that the benefits are going to the company
| that made the seeds rather than the farmer, then how is
| that different from any other patented technology? The
| farmer is never going to be worse off, since he can
| always just use older varieties if the cost > his
| benefit.
|
| Perhaps your actual argument is that this will reduce
| food prices, driving out producers who don't keep up with
| the latest advances. But again, how is that different
| from any other improvement in agricultural technology? Is
| this just more European objection to the steamroller of
| US industrial agriculture?
| xwdv wrote:
| sillystuff wrote:
| GM crops that produce BT toxin are supposed to be safe for
| humans due to the acid in our stomachs breaking down the BT
| toxin. But, I wasn't able to find any studies that
| investigated the safety of BT toxin in contact with mucus
| membranes in the mouth etc. before being processed by the
| stomach. It seems, at least, possible that this could lead
| to an increased risk of throat and mouth cancers. GM BT
| corn, egg plant (aubergine), and potatoes are common.
|
| Herbicide resistant GM crops used to get slathered with
| more herbicides than non-GM crops, so you probably were
| getting less exposure to these herbicides with non-GM
| conventional crops vs. GM conventional crops (I guess you
| could argue this falls into business practices, but it is
| the point of these GM crops). But, Ag schools, at least in
| the US, have been promoting using herbicides like
| glyphosate and Reglone to desiccate crops immediately prior
| to harvest[1] to avoid having to mow the crops to get a low
| uniform crop moisture content for harvesting equipment. So,
| conventional non-GM grains, oil seeds and legumes may also
| have high herbicide residues. Of course, buying organic
| avoids both sources of herbicides.
|
| [1] https://extension.umn.edu/small-grains-harvest-and-
| storage/m...
| xwdv wrote:
| Meh, none of those issues are inherent to GM crops
| themselves, and even some non-GM crops can be bad for you
| in certain circumstances.
| sillystuff wrote:
| Your "meh" is similar to disregarding contemporary
| environmental PFAS contamination because of historic lead
| contamination from tetraethyllead. "There exist bad
| things already" does not automatically make the
| additional potentially bad thing harmless.
|
| BT is sprayed on some food crops, but with GM food crops,
| it is contained within every cell of the plant, and
| cannot be washed off. You _are_ consuming BT toxin, if
| you eat GM BT crops (the US EPA requires BT crops to be
| registered as pesticides). Putting poison in contact with
| mucus membranes seems, at the very least, 'possible' to
| have negative long-term health consequences.
|
| Non GM conventional crops can use systemic pesticides
| (the irrigation water contains the poison and/or the seed
| is pre-treated. This also incorporates the pesticide
| within plant tissues so it cannot be washed off). These
| systemic pesticides are usually neonicotinoids. Presence
| of systemic neonicotinoid use in conventional agriculture
| does not negate concerns about GM BT crops.
|
| My point was that GM, as it exists today, makes
| conventional agriculture's issues of pesticide exposure
| and low genetic diversity in our staple food crops worse,
| not that conventional agriculture doesn't already have
| issues.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I think it's fair to say eating one plant is not comparable
| with eating a different plant. Why is eating one pattern of
| DNA (rice) less dangerous than another (Castor beans, where
| ricin comes from)? I think that's pretty self-explanatory.
| They code for different proteins.
|
| I think the answer is more that we have no reason to believe
| that these modifications introduced harmful proteins, and we
| tested it on animals and humans, and they were fine.
|
| The problem I have with GMOs generally speaking is the
| business model of patenting, selling sterile seeds that put
| farmers on mandatory subscription model - and that frequently
| the only genetic modification is to make the crop resistant
| to pesticides and herbicides so you can soak the fields,
| sterilize them and kill everything else. Or all 3 at once,
| like RoundUp Ready corn and soy.
| gruez wrote:
| >The problem I have with GMOs generally speaking is the
| business model of patenting, selling sterile seeds that put
| farmers on mandatory subscription model
|
| What you said also applies to hybrid varieties, yet they
| don't receive nearly as much pushback. Furthermore, what's
| wrong with a subscription model? GMO seeds costs money to
| develop and that has to be recouped somehow. The
| alternative is paying some sort of upfront fixed cost,
| which is probably even worse on a farmer's finances and
| gives large scale operations even more of an advantage
| (they have easy access to capital).
| imtringued wrote:
| >Furthermore, what's wrong with a subscription model? GMO
| seeds costs money to develop and that has to be recouped
| somehow.
|
| Developing countries must import seeds which forces them
| to export something to maintain balanced trade. Most
| developed nations are fighting currency wars against each
| other and developing countries which means they can at
| best export natural resources like oil, gold, raw copper
| or diamonds.
| gruez wrote:
| This seems like a self-correcting problem. If you can't
| export stuff then foreign currency/GMO seeds would get
| more and more expensive, until the increased productivity
| of GMO seeds isn't worth it anymore at which point you
| switch back to conventional seeds. Considering that you
| can't eat "natural resources like oil, gold, raw copper
| or diamonds", having the option to turn those things into
| more food (ie. by exporting them and using the money to
| buy GMO Seeds) seems like a net positive.
| [deleted]
| memco wrote:
| > Furthermore, what's wrong with a subscription model?
| GMO seeds costs money to develop and that has to be
| recouped somehow. The alternative is paying some sort of
| upfront fixed cost, which is probably even worse on a
| farmer's finances and gives large scale operations even
| more of an advantage (they have easy access to capital).
|
| A subscription isn't in and of itself a bad thing, but
| the expectation is a little strange given that the plants
| themselves spread and grow in places that cannot be
| regulated by the developers. Thus someone could subscribe
| once then cancel but still grow the crop. Further, people
| who didn't subscribe could end up having some of the crop
| spread onto their land then could unintentionally grow it
| without permission. This has sometimes led to attempts to
| either force people to pay for services they didn't agree
| to or to destroy something growing on their own land
| through no fault of their own. In those cases, non-
| customers are actively penalized for their non-
| participation rather being left alone or being
| incentivized to try product through positive means.
| gruez wrote:
| >but the expectation is a little strange given that the
| plants themselves spread and grow in places that cannot
| be regulated by the developers. Thus someone could
| subscribe once then cancel but still grow the crop.
|
| 1. As mentioned before, what isn't applicable to hybrid
| crops. If you try to collect the seeds of hybrid crops
| and try to plant them, you'll get the seeds of the
| parents, which aren't going to have the attributes you're
| looking for.
|
| 2. I take it that you're also against copyrights? After
| all, you can theoretically buy a blu-ray once, and copy
| it infinitely.
|
| >Further, people who didn't subscribe could end up having
| some of the crop spread onto their land then could
| unintentionally grow it without permission. This has
| sometimes led to attempts to either force people to pay
| for services they didn't agree to or to destroy something
| growing on their own land through no fault of their own.
| In those cases, non-customers are actively penalized for
| their non-participation rather being left alone or being
| incentivized to try product through positive means.
|
| Source for this? It's been often alleged that monsanto
| engages in this behavior, but according to wikipedia[1]
| they've only gone after farmers that were intentionally
| trying to reverse engineer/breed their seeds.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases#As
| _plaint...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If I kept getting sent single frames of a bluray whether
| I want them or not, but I was forbidden from putting
| those frames together into the full movie, I'd be pretty
| annoyed about that use of copyright too.
| [deleted]
| adrian_b wrote:
| From the description, proportionally more fertilizer (and
| water) is required, because one of the effects of the genetic
| change is an increased rate of extraction for the nitrogen
| compounds from the soil.
|
| The increased rate of nitrogen extraction, together with the
| higher rates of photosynthesis (which needs water to provide
| the hydrogen for reducing carbon dioxide, nitrates and
| sulfates) and of carbon dioxide reduction lead to a higher
| productivity.
|
| Unlike for some of the other genetically-modified crops, from
| the description there does not seem to be any reason to worry
| about eating such a rice, as the genetic modification does not
| seem to have any qualitative effects, but only quantitative
| effects, resulting in higher rates for the same chemical
| processes as in non-modified rice, obtained by multiplying the
| reaction sites.
| 32163704 wrote:
| owl57 wrote:
| I'm no biologist or chemist, but generally plant growth is a
| huge chain of chemical processes, and if you make some subset
| of these faster, can it lead, for example, to accumulation of
| byproducts that are normally used up nearly completely? Or to
| unexpected regulation of some other reactions, including
| possibly expressing something bad that's usually only made in
| the cells we don't eat, up to the anti-herbivore toxins?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Such things cannot be completely excluded, but they should
| also be easy to detect. I assume that for any such new
| cultivar many detailed chemical analyses will be done
| before deciding that all went well.
|
| Such side effects can also happen when using more
| traditional methods, i.e. selection of improved cultivars
| from plants that have suffered spontaneous random mutations
| or random mutations caused by mutagenic agents.
|
| On the other hand, when you insert a foreign gene in the
| plant genome, e.g. with the purpose of making it pest-
| resistant, the results are far more unpredictable then in
| cases like this, where an already existing gene has been
| duplicated, in order to increase its activity.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Or do these GMOs yield the around the same amount of nutrients
| which is the main desired output
| gruez wrote:
| Rice is pretty poor in micronutrients to begin with, so
| you're not missing out on much even if it was 50% lower.
| adrian_b wrote:
| That's right.
|
| As food, rice is mainly an excellent and easy to transport
| and store source of energy, with up to 80% of its weight
| being starch, more than in most other cereals.
|
| All the other nutrients are present in a quantity so small
| that their contribution is negligible. Rice can cover all
| of the energy needs of a human, but it must be accompanied
| by other food for enough proteins, vitamins and minerals.
| mdf wrote:
| Land use throughout the globe is at an unsustainable level,
| causing habitat loss for species and reduction in carbon sinks.
| Getting farmland to produce more per square meter would be very
| important, and the results presented in the article seem like a
| possibility in that regard.
|
| I wonder how this would combine with the effort[1] to modify rice
| to use the C4 kind of photosynthesis, if realized.
|
| [1] https://c4rice.com/
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Growing more quickly means higher ratio of calories to other
| nutrients.
| skybrian wrote:
| Yes, but I wonder if it matters when vitamins are widely
| available? Or alternatively, some nutrients get added at a
| later step. Iodized salt, for example.
|
| This might seem less "natural" but it seems like it would work?
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| That helps, though an issue is bioavailability - vitamin
| forms are typically harder for the body to process than the
| forms in food. There can also be other nutrients required
| together (e.g. calcium with vitamin D). Finally, I am 100%
| sure that, despite progress (e.g. fortified bread), we don't
| yet know all the nutrients, forms, and interactions.
|
| Nutrition science is historically dodgey.
| oofbey wrote:
| Diet research is super hard. But the current consensus is
| that nutrients are best obtained from natural sources.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| How would you know what kind of "nutrients" would you need to
| add?
|
| We don't even know all the molecules that make up a single
| grain of rice. Do you think we've already discovered all the
| required nutrients for humans?
|
| You don't want to end up like these cats:
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1987-08-14-mn-805-st...
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems pretty low risk. Given that not all cultures are
| rice-based, it seems unlikely that rice has any mysterious
| nutrient that's essential but not in other foods we eat.
| It's also unlikely that having somewhat less of it in rice
| will have dramatic effects.
|
| After all, people do eat a variety of different diets and
| often change their diets.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I think we should try to do more with automation to produce food
| more cheaply. I'd rather have a zillion little robots clipping
| weeds than spraying roundup on GMO roundup resistant crops to
| achieve the same effect. A farmer's job should be to press one
| button in the spring.
| xbar wrote:
| How much more Roundup is required?
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