Tomatoes ready for harvest in 40 days? Gene edited prototypes could transform one of the world’s most popular fruits

Scientists have just genetically modified cherry tomatoes to make them easier to grow, and the future applications could include making them more viable for indoor farming and even space travel, their creators say. The scientists, working out of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, used a gene-editing technology called CRISPR to make changes to three key genes within the cherry tomatoes’ DNA. Two…

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5x increase in rice yields? New CRISPR-created variety could help fight fungal pandemic decimating world’s rice crop

Thanks to CRISPR, farmers may finally have a good defense against rice blast, a fungal disease so devastating, it’s known as the “cancer of rice.” The challenge Rice provides more than 20% of the world’s calories, but every year, rice blast wipes out 10-30% of the world’s rice crops, making it a major threat to both global food security…

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‘CRISPR’ crops more resilient in climate crisis

  The ongoing scorching summer is pushing up global food prices, once again putting the food security in spotlight. And CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) crops could be part of the needed response, assuming governments allow them to be grown. In the 1990s, when a novel transgenic method for improving crops was commercially…

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