Tag: Food security

Support masks for farm workers – and the science of homemade masks

I hope that you and those who you care about are safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Without a doubt, this is a difficult time for so many people around the country and the world. I don’t need to tell you the number of people who have gotten sick or died because you hear it every day, and tomorrow it will just be higher. As doctors, nurses, scientists, public leaders, grocery store workers, farmers, and more work to slow the spread of the disease and mitigate its impacts, it can be difficult to find ways to help besides staying at home and protecting yourself and your family. Here’s what we’re doing to help, and how you can help too: Biofortified is making fabric masks for farm workers – and doing research on fabric mask efficacy too! We need your support so that this can continue until the pandemic is over. Read about our efforts, and see below how you can contribute to these projects.

100 face-fitting masks in 3 sizes. Frank N. Foode and Lanakila Papaya sport their own mask styles. These masks were shipped to farm workers. Credit: Karl HvM

Sewing our way to safety and sanity

As many of you know, I’m very good at sewing. I’m known for my homemade shirts! When I found my research at UC Riverside shut down mid-March, I knew that I could contribute by sewing masks so that people could keep each other safer when they have to go outside. A friend of mine, comedian Kristina Wong, tagged me and a few others she knew who could sew, so she had the same idea. She knew about my sewing because I helped her finish some costumes and props for some of her public performances, and she was getting a group together. Soon she was all over the news with her effort, and the Auntie Sewing Squad was born.

She’s been doing a great job organizing the now 600-strong group of volunteer cutters, seamsters, drivers and more, and we are churning out thousands of masks per week. Requests come in from all around the country, from New York hospitals to local care facilities and grocery stores, farms, and First Nations who have been hit harder by the virus than most. For instance, today there’s a van heading from the group to the Navajo Nation with masks, fabric, sewing machines, medical supplies, and more. In addition to sewing masks, I’ve been cutting and crimping nose wires to send to other members of the group. It has been gratifying to see people posting pictures of all our masks, and when I feel stressed about what is going on – spending an hour cutting fabric, sewing, or attaching elastic really helps keep me sane.
Right: Masks and nose wires right before I drop them off at the post office.

Masks can protect the food supply

Many people have lost their jobs or have been severely impacted by this pandemic. We worry about getting sick, or being able to get supplies like toilet paper and medicines, and especially – food. There are countless articles about supply problems, and food being dumped because restaurants aren’t buying as much. And there are outbreaks of the virus at grocery stores and food processing facilities. Meat packing plants have proven to be especially vulnerable, and even today a Maruchan ramen factory reported an outbreak, while farmers are worried about having enough labor to harvest their crops. Fabric masks for farm workers and other essential people can help keep them safe, and keep the rest of us stuck at home – fed.

Many food system jobs are not well-paid, and many people who have these jobs do not have access to masks that can help protect themselves and each other. They are getting sick. Providing masks for communities that are both under-served and critical will help slow the spread of the disease, help ensure stability in the food supply, and help states get on track toward gradually opening their economies. Yesterday, I was pleased to mail 100 of my masks to farm workers in Ventura, CA, and more requests to our sewing group keep coming in. Your donations can help get masks to farm workers and more.

Frank N. Foode and Lanakila Papaya check the box of masks before it ships off. Credit: Karl HvM

Sew what? How about some science?

We don’t have enough N95 masks for everyone, let alone health care workers. Fabric masks aren’t a substitute for N95 masks, but they can lower your risk of contracting the disease and – especially – spreading it to others. While we know that fabric masks can help – we don’t exactly know by how much. There are multiple stories about research being done on mask materials, and also some about testing mask designs. Many of these involve ideal conditions, or make simple measurements that don’t give us the full range of data we need to make informed decisions about the impact of fabric masks. As a scientist who sews, and works at a University with excellent research programs in pollution and aerosols, setting up a research project on fabric masks is a natural fit.

I have already started working with the lab of Dr. Yang Wang at Missouri Science & Tech, whose graduate student Weixing Hao has been testing the filtration efficiency and pressure drop of fabrics and other materials, some of which I have sent them, along with Dr. Maya Trotz at the University of Southern Florida and Dr. Linsey Marr at Virginia Tech. This means that we can find out how well multiple layers of each material can filter particles from the air, as well as how breathable the materials are. Results keep coming in, and you can access them publicly here. But what it can’t tell us is how well these materials work in practice in masks worn by people.

I really wanted to test the fabric masks themselves, and on real human beings. Dr. Wang helped me connect to scientists at UC Riverside who were experts in aerosols, and Dr. Don Collins and his graduate student Candice Sirmollo stepped up to help. My PI Dr. Mikeal Roose is very supportive. Together we got to work designing a project and are now busy getting the approvals we need to proceed. It’s looking very good (we got our IRB determination letter Friday), but there are a lot of steps left to take. I’m excited to get started, so I’ve already started buying the supplies we need to get ready, including special probes to be installed inside the masks to sample the air for testing. Once we get clearance to proceed, I want masks ready to be tried on for our first experiments. We want to get our results out to the public as soon as possible, so there’s no time to waste!

Diagram of air sampling setup, by Candice Sirmollo

How you can support us

I count myself privileged to continue to work and be paid while many are having difficulty making ends meet. The mask sewing is voluntary, but it takes money to buy mask supplies, ship nose wires and completed masks, and to buy specialized equipment for our proposed research. Biofortified has spent funds out of our very tiny budget to meet these needs, and we could really use your support to help us in these efforts. Donations will go toward sewing and shipping masks, supporting other seamsters in the Auntie Sewing Squad, purchasing materials to test with Dr. Wang’s group, and purchasing supplies to be donated to the fabric mask fit-testing project when and if it receives final approval. The sampling probes alone were almost $300, which will enable us to test 500 masks.

If you are able to, please consider making a donation today.

If you wish to donate directly to the Auntie Sewing Squad and support everyone’s mask-making volunteer efforts, you can can send money one of two ways (tell her Karl sent you):

  • Kristina Wong PayPal General Donations using (Friends & Family): k@kristinasherylwong.com
  • Kristina Wong Venmo General Donations HERE: “GiveKristinaWongMoney”

When the mask fit testing research is fully approved, I will post how you can donate directly to the University to support our research.

If you find yourself in a position to be able to help, you have our thanks. Stay safe, and we’ll share our progress here as we move forward.

Find out more

Resources for farms (from the American Farm Bureau site):

Comment TODAY on edible cottonseed deregulation

The fate of cottonseed rests in your hands.

More than eight years ago, we wrote about a project at Texas A&M University led by Dr. Keerti Rathore to create edible cottonseed. If determined to be safe for food and the environment, this has the potential to make large amounts of protein and calories available that would normally be locked up in the seed. This trait is undergoing deregulation with USDA-APHIS right now, and we encourage our readers to submit comments before the deadline at the end of the day today.

Background

Cotton plants produce a potent defense compound called gossypol, which is toxic to many animals, including humans. Gossypol is produced by special glands throughout the plant, from leaves to seeds, and protects the plants from insect pests and diseases. Some varieties of cotton are glandless and do not produce toxic levels of gossypol, making the seeds and leaves edible. However, because these glandless cotton varieties have lost the protective benefits in their leaves, they are more susceptible to insect damage and are not commonly grown.

Gossypol. Source: Wikimedia Commons


Using RNAi, Dr. Rathore’s team at TAMU created a variety they call TAM66274 that “silences” the production of gossypol just in the seeds, producing a plant that defends itself against pests in the leaves, but produces seeds that have ultra-low levels of gossypol in the seeds, making them safe to eat. If applied on a large scale, it could allow humans and many other animals access to the protein contained in cottonseed. According to the data they collected for their application, the composition of the cottonseed was otherwise unchanged, the plants performed the same in the field, and there were very minor changes in the length of the fibers, which they suggest will not be an issue when the trait is bred into “elite” cotton varieties.

The impacts of this trait could be far-reaching. Some estimates suggest that the amount of protein produced in cottonseed worldwide could satisfy the needs of 500 million people. Ruminant animals are able to tolerate some gossypol in their diets, so this trait could create greater flexibility in the animal feed supply. This would turn cottonseed into a valuable co-product of cotton production that could benefit cotton farmers at every scale, producing more food without using more land. Read more about how this trait works and its potential impacts on agriculture in Cotton like Candy.

What APHIS wants to hear from you

Open comment periods for federal regulations are often misunderstood. Some organizations use them to gather signatures (and email addresses) of supporters for their political causes, or set up form letters to mass-send the same talking points over and over to regulators. These actually do nothing more than single letters from one person that say the same thing – because the regulators are looking for public input to identify issues that they should look into during the process – not to count the number of people who think one action or another is a good idea. Back when the FDA was looking for input on biotechnology outreach, there were many opponents and supporters of biotechnology saying “don’t do it” and “do it”, when that was not even a question. It was mandated by Congress, so the question was how should it be done?

Cotton field, by Kimberlykv

Similarly, when the USDA-APHIS is reviewing a genetically engineered crop, they are not going to count how many people say “yes” or “no” to the question of whether to de-regulate (approve) a crop, they want to know what issues related to the economic and environmental impacts they should be aware of when they do the review. Will the crop become a pest on farms? Will it help control pests? Will it benefit the bottom lines of farmers, or reduce the ability of other farmers to farm the way they want to? This is your chance as members of the public, as knowledgeable scientists and science enthusiasts, and as people who think deeply about far-reaching impacts of biotechnological applications, to inform the USDA about data, ideas, and concerns that you have that they can look into when evaluating the crop.
Here it is in their words:

We are advising the public that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has received a petition from Texas A&M AgriLife Research seeking a determination of nonregulated status of cotton designated as event TAM66274, which has been genetically engineered for ultra-low gossypol levels in the cottonseed. The petition has been submitted in accordance with our regulations concerning the introduction of certain genetically engineered organisms and products. We are making the Texas A&M AgriLife Research petition available for review and comment to help us identify potential environmental and interrelated economic issues and impacts that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service may determine should be considered in our evaluation of the petition.

Comments are due today at midnight Eastern Time. Since there is not much time left to comment, you can keep your comments brief, but if you have input to give our regulators, please do! There are only 39 comments showing at the time of writing, so you could have an impact. Take a look at the documents prepared by the TAMU research team, and tell the USDA-APHIS what you think. Join me in submitting a public comment on low-gossypol cotton!

We will be following this trait as it moves along, while thinking about how we can improve our own alerts to help mobilize scientists, farmers, and the rest of you to prepare impactful submissions that can help strengthen the regulatory process.

Give Silenced Crops your Voice!

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The impact of the papaya ringspot virus in Hawaii

For decades, the people who depend upon papayas have been in trouble. One of their greatest challenges has been the devastating papaya ringspot virus, which has defied conventional approaches to management and eradication. In the 1980s and 90s, plant scientists turned to using biotechnology to create papaya plants that would resist the disease. In 1998, the first seeds of a genetically engineered Hawaiian papaya were planted by farmers, which quickly became a success story that rescued farmers from the destruction caused by the virus.
Other scientists around the world were working on similar approaches for the different papaya varieties that farmers grew in their countries. The viral strains they faced in each country were also different. Scientists in Thailand, Venezuela, and elsewhere worked on duplicating the Hawaiian success story. But these projects have not succeeded because of strong pressure from activists, including vandalism and destruction of research, threats, and silencing the voices of the scientists who were trying to help their own people – who depended on this tropical fruit. In the year 2000 the papayas in Venezuela were burnt to the ground.
Now we have a chance to hear the voices that have been silenced. A group of science communicators led by Guido Núñez launched a Kickstarter to support their documentary, Silenced Crops, which recently passed their minimum funding goal. With just 24 hours left to their fundraiser, you can still be a part of their effort to tell this story, and also get some benefits for yourself. We interviewed Guido so we could all learn more about his project. Read on, below!

1. Please tell us a little about yourself and your team.

We are a team composed by me, a computational biologist, Raúl Vegas, an entomologist and Sebastián Gamboa, a filmmaker. We are all from the Andean region of Venezuela, Raúl and I went to college together in Mérida and Sebastián is a mutual friend. II have been thinking about this documentary for many years, and I asked Raúl if he knew of a great film director, and he recruited Sebastián for the project. I am living between Santiago, Chile and Denver, Colorado, and Raúl and Sebastián live in Mérida. Our full team is:
silenced-crops-2

  • Executive producer: Guido Núñez;
  • Field Producer: Raúl Vegas;
  • Director and editor: Sebastián Gamboa;
  • Direction of photography: Marleny Salas y Sebastián Gamboa;
  • Sound Direction: Gherman Gil;
  • Graphic Design: Betzabeth Millano;
  • 2D Animation: Arturo Marquina;
  • Production in Caracas: Mariah Sosa;
  • Consultant: Kaori Flores;
  • Pictures: Katie Briceño;
  • Social media: Alena Luces and Raúl Vegas

2. What inspired you to investigate the Venezuela GM papaya story for a documentary?

I was at my first semester in the university when this incident happened. I saw first-hand the campaign of lies and rumors against the papayas and the scientists, I remember the terror of people in Mérida. I decided on that moment to fight against it, and even if I could not do a lot, I started writing scientific articles, giving talks, and I founded the first skeptical association of Venezuela when I was 18 years old. There are some obsessions that you cannot get out of your head, and this documentary is one of those, it is extremely unfair that the scientists never got to express their views in public. I have been thinking about it for years, but now I decided to make it happen, as the food crisis in Venezuela is a direct result of the same attitude to science (and economy) and experts that destroyed the papayas. I also was selected recently as a Fellow of the Cornell Alliance for Science, an initiative to change the public perception of science and educate the public about the benefits of biotechnology, and this project would complement my fellowship there.

3. Who does this issue affect the most?

This affects consumers the most, who get fruits of lower quality and farmer who get poor yields. Researchers were affected and persecuted, even for just writing favorably about biotechnology.

4. Who are you going to interview for the documentary? Do you have any plans to reach out to local groups who opposed the transgenic papaya?

A large part of the documentary is interviewing groups who still, in the middle of the crisis in Venezuela, insist that GM agriculture is not necessary. We will interview local farmers, one of the security guards of the project and of course the researchers who developed the papaya.

infected-papaya
Papayas infected with the ringspot virus, Thailand.

5. Did the papaya research in Venezuela stop altogether or is it still being worked on?

The genetic material of the papaya is frozen and locked, waiting for better times. The research, not only in papaya, but in GM plants, stopped in Venezuela. I actually ended up as a computational biologist because the research in GM plants was not pursued by the labs in my university.

6. What are some questions that you have about the Venezuelan GM papaya story that you hope to answer in your documentary?

I am curious to find out if the main promoters of the papaya incident are still in Venezuela and helping the farmers, or if they left the country and are not living the results of their actions. I want to know if the lives of the farmers are any better as a result of this, and we are going to do some social science research with the funds too to figure this out.

7. Who is your main audience for this documentary – who do you hope to reach with this story, and who needs to hear it the most?

We primarily hope to reach layman audiences who do not understand the consequences of science rejection and policy making based on ideology. We also want to reach anyone interested in the disaster happening in Venezuela these days, to tell the story of one of the first obvious mistakes of the Chavista government. To the anti GMO activists, I hope to reach them and show them that their actions have profound effects.

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Papaya Amigurumi, one of the rewards you can get by donating to their Kickstarter. Also available are DVDs, credits, and satisfaction.

8. Congratulations on passing your minimum funding goal of US $3,000! If you are able to raise more funds for this project, what more do you think you will be able to do with the project?

I intend to pay better salaries to our team. 3,000 USD is not a lot, even if it goes a very long way in Venezuela, but we are all working on this because we care deeply about the issue, because we want people to learn from our tragedy in Venezuela, so we’ll pay the team a bit more. A minimum wage in Venezuela these days is 12 USD a month, so every extra dollar will be able to help people there.

9. Finally, after the fundraiser is over, are there other ways that people can help you achieve your goals?

We are going to sell T shirts and mugs and we will keep accepting donations on PayPal.

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Some of their T-shirt designs

We thank Guido for taking the time to tell us more about his project! Now is your chance to lend your voice to the plight of papaya farmers, consumers, and scientists in Venezuela. I, for one, am donating $25 to get one of their cute Papaya Amigurumi knit plushies. As someone who has dabbled in plant plushies, I can appreciate the artwork!
It will be a challenge to get all the voices needed to make a good documentary that is true to the scientific facts, while also allowing for inclusiveness of the diverse people who are part of this story – many of who are not necessarily motivated by science but by conflicting values. I think, though, that sticking to the most universal values – such as the hardships borne by the people of Venezuela from the consumers and farmers to the scientists, and their hope for a better world will have the most impact. I already can’t wait to hear the voices of Venezuela that we will hear when we watch Silenced Crops.

A look at GMO policies in different nations

In the debate surrounding GMOs, a statement that is often made is that many countries have banned transgenic crops, which suggests that they are not safe. Here’s an example from the Non-GMO Project’s website:

“Most developed nations do not consider GMOs to be safe. In more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs.”

All countries have laws and regulations surrounding biotech crops, including the United States, which is why you can’t develop a transgenic crop and have it sold in stores the following season. Very few countries have an outright ban, where GMOs can neither be grown nor imported. According to GMOAnswers.com, only Kenya falls in this category, but I also found that Peru has a 10-year ban on the use and import of GMO seeds.
Continue reading “A look at GMO policies in different nations” →

Space Farming is Science FICTION

The future of agriculture? Photo: NASA
The future of agriculture? Photo: NASA

It said on the screen, “Bioregenerating Soil-Based Space Agriculture.” The title of the talk was “Beyond Intensification.” The speaker, a prominent researcher and prolific author, is someone who I thought would present clear thinking on how, in addition to intensification of current agriculture, we can go about producing enough food for the earth’s growing population. I glanced around to see if anyone else was astonished. Space farming, he said, was the next step after agricultural intensification with food coming from the Moon and Mars. “Has it come to that?” I thought.
I am a fan of science fiction. Not a costumed, Trekkie-conference fan, but a fan. However, over the years, I have realized that the stories I enjoy most are mostly fiction; the science is often ignored. This is “soft” science fiction, the stuff of most Sci-Fi movies because there is a way to visit distant planets; think warp drives on the Enterprise, a hyperdrive in the Millennium Falcon, and wormholes in Interstellar. Continue reading “Space Farming is Science FICTION” →

Thoughts About Norm Borlaug for his 100th Birthday

Written by Steve Savage. Graphs by Steve, based on FAO and Geohive data.

Norman Borlaug would have been 100 years old last week.  He has been called “The Man Who Fed The World,” and “The Father of The Green Revolution.”  Norm Borlaug was the first plant pathologist to be awarded a Nobel Prize (1970) – for contributions to world peace. For all of use who are fellow plant pathologists, his work has been particularly inspiring.

It is a good time to look back at how the challenge of feeding the world population was met during Borlaug’s career, because we have a similar challenge ahead of us. The chart below shows global population from 1950 with a projection to 2100.  I’ve been looking at food production data available from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOSTAT).  If we look at the half century since FAO started tracking it in 1960,  global population increased by 3.89 billion.  Between 2010 and 2060, global population is projected to rise by another 3.04 billion.

Between 1960 and 2010, production of most crops did manage to keep up with population growth and for many crops there was actually more available per person in 2010 than in 1960.  Living standards also improved in many parts of the world, which meant that people were able to enjoy that per capita increase.  Fertility rates have declined with the education of women combined with improvements in living standards and food security. It is projected that global human population will level off by around 2100 due to these factors.

The increase in food production during Borlaug’s era was mostly achieved through increased yield on each acre or hectare grown, not from farming more land.  That was made possible by agronomic improvements,  including the breeding advances that came from the work of Borlaug and many others.

graph2

In the graph above, the two bottom, green bars show the global crop area in the window 1960-65 (1.09 billion hectares) and 2005-10 (1.45 billion hectares).  The increase, shown in the red bar, is 362 million hectares. That is an enormous amount of land, but without increased yield, it would have taken nearly 3.1 billion hectares (blue bar) to have provided the amount of food that was available to the world by 2010.  That effectively means that the global farming community, and those that aided it with technologies, advice and expertise, “saved” more than 1.6 billion hectares of land from being converted from a natural state into farmland.  Realistically, there is not that much land which could ever be farmed.

Many of Borlaug’s contributions were to the staple food crop – wheat.

Wheat is not a single crop, but a collection of many different types of wheat grown for different kinds of food ranging from hearty breads, to pasta, to crackers, to flat breads to soft noodles. By the end of this 50 year window, the world’s wheat farmers were producing 2.69 times as much wheat as in 1960. However, 97% of that increase (green part of the bar) was enabled by higher yields.  Only 10 million more hectares were being grown. That meant that the world could continue to have enough wheat without the need for adding 346 million more wheat hectares.  That is the legacy of Borlaug and the other participants in the Green Revolution.

The story with rice is almost as positive.  In 2005-10, humanity had access to 2.9 times as much rice as in 1960-65, and 83% of the increase was attributable to yield with 39 million new hectares added.  That meant that there were 187 million hectares which did not need to be added to the rice production base.

The story behind these higher yields is complex and varies across geographies. The details of how we might continue this sort of progress through 2060 are also complex and will involve new challenges such as climate change.  Even so, on this important anniversary it is fitting to look back at the remarkable accomplishments of the past to find inspiration for the challenges of the future.  Let us hope that at the 150th anniversary of Norm Borlaug’s birth people will once again be able to look back and tell this kind of story.  A story about humanity continuing to be fed, but without having had to add much if any new farmed land.  Even into his 90s, Borlaug continued to be an articulate proponent for letting farmers use the full toolbox of technologies, including biotechnology, to pursue such goals.  Now it is up to us to continue to make that case.

Written by Guest Expert

Steve Savage has worked with various aspects of agricultural technology for more than 35 years. He has a PhD in plant pathology and his varied career included Colorado State University, DuPont, and the bio-control start-up, Mycogen. He is an independent consultant working with a wide variety of clients on topics including biological control, biotechnology, crop protection chemicals, and more. Steve writes and speaks on food and agriculture topics (Applied Mythology blog) and does a bi-weekly podcast called POPAgriculture for the CropLife Foundation.

Play it Hard – A Tribute to Dr. Norman Borlaug


The International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) and Biology Fortified have produced a special video tribute to the late Dr. Norman Borlaug, a legendary CIMMYT scientist who developed high-yielding, semi-dwarf wheat that started the Green Revolution which is credited with saving over 1 billion people from starvation. The release of this tribute coincides with The Borlaug Summit on Wheat for Food Security, on what would have been the 100th birthday of Dr. Borlaug. His message of increasing food production and the importance of using science in this effort are still important today – perhaps more than ever as the world has over 7 billion people and still growing.
To follow this event, go to www.borlaug100.org, and follow the #borlaug100 hashtag in social media. For more information about CIMMYT, visit www.cimmyt.org. Continue reading “Play it Hard – A Tribute to Dr. Norman Borlaug” →

Reductionist thinking and GMOs

Written by Bill Price

While the article GMOs, Silver Bullets and the Trap of Reductionist Thinking has garnered some praise, I was hoping for more here and was left unimpressed. Written by Jonathan Foley, Director of the Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, the article begins by stating that GMOs have come with “Big Problems”. He goes on to elaborate several points that are actually either old myths, untrue, or not really GE specific. In the move from “lab into the real world” he states that “they end up being very disappointing.” I wonder how many growers across the globe would agree with that. I’d like to take a closer look at some of the “problems” that he sees: Continue reading “Reductionist thinking and GMOs” →

Forego a hamburger, feed a person

I eat meat. More specifically, I eat feedlot beef from major supermarket chains and generally enjoy it. Nonetheless, the implications of a recent study have me questioning whether I will eat meat in the future.
In their paper, Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare, Cassidy et al. present the case that we could feed an additional 4 billion people by growing food for people rather than for livestock. We could do this because feeding crops to livestock is inherently an inefficient way to feed people. In the U.S. (worst case country in this paper), only 1/3 of the calories produced per acre (pre-waste) actually make it to people, mainly due to corn being grown on a large amount of land but being fed to livestock, where most of the calories are lost. The authors estimate that “the US agricultural system alone could feed 1 billion additional people by shifting crop calories to direct human consumption.” Continue reading “Forego a hamburger, feed a person” →

The fruits of climate change

Zaiger pluot whole and sliced.
Zaiger pluot, courtesy of BMRR on Wikipedia.

The other day I found myself looking through the plant patents held by the Zaiger’s Genetics team. The Zaigers, a family of plant breeders led by a UC Davis Plant Pathology graduate, have developed some very cool fruits. You may know of the pluot, and apparently they have a peach with low acid that has taken the world by storm. They have developed many plants with important and beneficial characteristics besides taste – but they taste great too.
I know some people dislike patents, but I have no objection to people who have developed these novel plants having patents on them. But considering what it takes to breed wonderful fruit tree varieties like these, you can understand why these patents exist.
Zaiger’s Genetics has been breeding fruit trees for decades, with many interesting successes. For some background on Floyd Zaiger a fruit innovator to the world and his family that continues this work, there was a great article in SFGate last year. One fruit they describe in that article is a hybridized nectarine popular in Spain:

One of Zaiger’s hybridized nectarines grown in Spain can mature 10 days ahead of anything else in Europe – “so they have a market almost all to themselves,” he says. That 10-day difference can make or break a country’s fruit industry. Continue reading “The fruits of climate change” →