The tomatoes shown here were created with a cutting-edge gene-editing tool called CRISPR.
Are foods like this the solution to better nutrition and food security in the face of climate change?
It was a tomato plant, but it was unlike any that has ever existed.
Photo: David Malosh
Where most are long and leggy, this one was short and bushy.
“Look at this cluster!”
Lippman said, kneeling down to grab a handful of fruit.
Zachary Lippman tends to gene-edited tomatoes in his lab’s vast greenhouse. Currently, he’s growing more than a dozen varieties, as well as groundcherries, with many more types of produce in the works.
It also requires a lot less land and resources than a traditional farm.
It is remarkably accurate and easy to use.
(See “CRISPR: Explained,” below.)
Illustration by Jing Zhang.
What really blew Lippman away is how fast it works.
(See “4 Ways New Crop Varieties Are Made,” below.)
And that could make the difference between a food-secure world and a much scarier one.
I’d always been skeptical of GMOs.
Bt crops reduced the amount of pesticides farmers had to use on these crops by up to 99%.
If Monsanto had continued down this path, the history of GMOs might have been very different.
Might there be unintended consequences to mixing genes in ways nature never would have allowed?
Despite scientists' assurances that GMOs are safe to eat, many consumers want no part of them.
Fruits and veggies, however, have remained largely untouched.
And considering the likely public backlash, few companies are willing to risk it.
But when Lippman read the first papers on CRISPR, he knew that crop breeding had changed forever.
“I grabbed a sticky note and wrote ‘promoter CRISPR’ and stuck it to my desk.
As soon as the studies hit, those ideaslike promoter CRISPRwent right to the front.
If the gene is the car, the promoter is the gas pedal.
All these changes were things that might occur naturally if a breeder got very, very lucky.
Lippman hoped this would make gene-edited crops less disquieting to consumers and federal regulators.
(See “Grocery Shopping Is About to Change,” below.)
But will people eat them?
(Although 76% said they could increase the global food supply.)
Are they really fundamentally dicier than traditionally bred crops, though?
That’s what drives evolution.
So worrying about a single edited gene, Lippman said, makes no sense.
“It’s one mutation in a sea of ones that already exist.
Every plant you eat contains thousands of new mutations,” he shrugged.
“How do you feel?”
“Risk is relative,” she told me.
“We tend to underestimate the risks of familiar technologies and over estimate the risks of new ones.
Traditional breeding can introduce more random mutations than gene editing does.”
If these technologies might help to manage them, that’s an important consideration.”
Nitrogen is essential for plant growth, and our fast-growing crops require an intense supply of it.
“Getting nitrogen into the ground is probably the biggest headache a farmer has,” said Rubbelke.
“It’s expensive.
And to get it on at the right stage is next to impossible.”
If conditions are too dry, it vaporizes into the air and becomes a major greenhouse gas.
Proven may change that.
Living symbiotically on their roots were Proven microbes (which had been applied to the seeds).
That got Chad Rubbelke’s attention.
“I was sold!
That, in turn, would significantly reduce nitrogen runoff and greenhouse gas emissions.
By midsummer, he’d already seen results in his wheat crops too.
“The Proven wheat was noticeably taller and had a larger root mass.
It was exciting and I hope these results lead to greater yield in the end.”
We said, ‘Try our product and see what you think.’
Every single one of them has already signed up to be a commercial customer this year.
We were blown away.”
“Microbes are like an extension of the plant’s immune system,” Temme explained.
“They can help it withstand climate change and make the whole ag system more resilient and sustainable.”
Other biologicals are being designed to fight weeds.
“You’re looking at the wild ancestor of tomatoes.
In its native environment of Central and South America, the tomato is not an annual.
It’s a tall, bushy, woody perennial.”
He lifted a leaf to reveal a tiny green nubbin.
“See this little fruit right here?
It’s not going to get bigger than a tiny marble.”
Suddenly they could be grown as row crops and easily harvested.
Most commercial varieties are descended from that original plant.
“We probably eat a few hundred.”
And that’s how it is for most of our food crops, Lippman told me.
Each depended on rare mutations to turn them into something that could be farmed.
“Of the hundreds of thousands of plant species, tens of thousands are edible,” he said.
“We probably eat a few hundred.”
And for every useful gene we’ve drafted into agriculture, another 500 are sitting on the sidelines.
“We’re opening up these reservoirs of genetic diversity in nature!”
Lippman exclaimed, hustling me across the greenhouse to look at two sprawling shrubs.
“I think there’s real potential to make this a major berry crop.”
Dangling beneath the leaves of one plant were papery lanterns, each holding a single, small fruit.
They were groundcherries, tasty wild plants that naturally produce just one fruit per branch.
“I love the flavor of these things,” Lippman said.
“But they’re the worst producers imaginable and they take forever to fruit.
It’s a nightmare.
But we can make them more compact, flower faster and have more concentrated fruit.”
Lippman picked a groundcherry, peeled back the lantern, and handed it to me.
They’re so good.
All those pineapple and vanilla scents."
It smelled strange but alluring, new and yet deeply familiar, like something from our primeval past.
I was all in.
The gene editing works on animals too.
Here’s a more detailed look at how the technology works to edit genes.
Scientists identify the gene for a trait they want to edit.
An enzymetypically one called Cas9that acts as a kind of molecular scissors, is attached to the RNA.
The CRISPR construct is added to a test tube or petri dish along with the cell to be edited.
The Cas9 “scissors” then snip the DNA at that exact point.
If scientists simply want to deactivate the gene, that’s enough.
Cells have natural repair enzymes that stitch broken DNA strands back together.
As the cells reproduce, they will all have the new DNA and express the desired trait.
How it works: Breeders cross-pollinate two varieties of the same species.
The resulting seeds have a mix of genes from the two parents, along with normal random mutations.
Breeders grow them and pick the plants with the most desirable traits.
Occasionally, natural mutations occur and farmers select for the traits they like and grow those new varieties.)
Number of genes affected:A few genes to entire genomes.
Federal regulation:None.
Used on:Almost everything we eat.
Breeders snag the most interesting results (which are unpredictable) and crossbreed them with existing varieties.
Number of genes affected:Hundreds to thousands.
Number of genes affected:One to eight.
Number of genes affected:One or more.
Drought-Tolerant Soybeans
Why:To maintain global food production during hotter, drier summers.
Bigger, Hardier Sweet Potatoes
Why:To improve food security in Africa.
The sweet potatoes will also have boosted levels of beta carotene to treat vitamin A deficiency.
High-Yield Rice
Why:To improve food security in Asia.
He received a James Beard Award for his EatingWell feature “Or Not to Bee.”
