Interesting Monsanto news

[Punchy]

Paywalled article at Sac Business Journal

The gist of the article is that Monsanto has been doing accelerated crossbreeding - not gene splicing - for some of their seeds. At their Woodland facility, at least, they take plant and seed tissue samples to look for trait markers so that they don't have to wait a full growing period to find what they're looking for. Then they plant only the seeds that have the desired traits. Wash, rinse, repeat. It seems as though they've been doing this for quite some time.

Of course, their big ticket items are still corn, chemicals, and soy (by a factor of 100 or more), but this is a good start to soothing the anti-GMO contingent.

That being said, I'll still buy heirloom seeds from the small guys

 

[Lerxst]

What types of plants are they doing this with?

 

[Coralkong]

That is interesting.

 

[Punchy]

What types of plants are they doing this with?

The article mentions watermelon, broccoli, onions, and jalapenos. It says this particular lab tests 40,000 plants a day, so I'm sure there are more veggies than those. Apparently the lab and process was started at this location by a company called Seminis back in 1972, but Monsanto just dumped $31 million into expansion at the facility. We supplied at least a portion of the metal framing and drywall

 

[Lerxst]

I know there's particular interest in selective seed breeding for developing areas that lack agricultural infrastructure. It's pretty interesting that they can so significantly accelerate the process that man has been doing since we first decided to grow crops and pick the seeds from the plants with the most bountiful harvest to sow the next season.

 

[DFB]

What types of plants are they doing this with?

Weed!

 

[Lerxst]

Weed!

Have you ever selectively breed plants.........on weed? That's some crazy shit man.

 

[Coralkong]

Weed has been selectively grown for quite some time.

It is a lot stronger than it used to be 40 years ago, thank God.

 

[Punchy]

I know there's particular interest in selective seed breeding for developing areas that lack agricultural infrastructure. It's pretty interesting that they can so significantly accelerate the process that man has been doing since we first decided to grow crops and pick the seeds from the plants with the most bountiful harvest to sow the next season.

Yeah, it says they've got the process time-crunched from 10 years down to 4.

Also, quoted from the article: "Being able to easily select for color, flavor, and smell with genetics is new, Boddupalli said, and it will help give vegetables an advantage against convenient and better-tasting processed foods. Pre-cleaned, packaged sweet tomatoes the size of grapes or brightly colored bell peppers the size of a strawberry can make vegetables an easy snack. That's what Monsanto is hoping for with its Bella Fina brand of sweet baby bell peppers or its Beneforte brand of broccoli, which helps boost antioxidant levels. Those products are on store shelves now, usually featuring the grower's name and a trademark for Seminis, which Monsanto kept as a subsidiary."

 

[Lerxst]

oh, so instead of bringing higher sustainable ag yields to those who could use it most, Monsanto is making novelty vegetables for consumers who already have a glut of choices. Why am I not surprised?

 

[Punchy]

oh, so instead of bringing higher sustainable ag yields to those who could use it most, Monsanto is making novelty vegetables for consumers who already have a glut of choices. Why am I not surprised?

That was only part of the article, but it makes sense that they're trying to push in on a new market with this stuff. Some of the other traits that they are looking for is taller stalks on broccoli so it can be machine harvested. That's less novelty and of more use to farmers. Also, the article mentions that vegetable seeds (minus the aforementioned corn and soy) account for only 4 percent of their sales, so it's likely somebody's pet department and good PR generator.

 

[GilmourD]

Eugenics.

 

[Tiltsta]

I can't really say much about what happens at Monsanto, but we were doing stuff like this (isolating desirable traits from screening meristem tissue from germinated seeds then clonally expanding the ones we wanted) in a graduate school plant cell culture class I took back in the mid 1990's. It was common enough then that it was being taught to students back then. We were doing it with arabadopsis and tobacco (model plant genetic systems).

 

[VoidTerraFirma]

Eugenics.