Witch finger, teardrop -- GMO?
Strange fruits again!!
Can you guys guess what this is??
They are sac of sugar and juice, also known as grapes, they call it the "Teardrop" or the "witch fingers", kinda fitting name for the elongated fruit haha.
So how did this grape arise?? Is this Genetically Modified food, GMO ?? Or is it a chemical mutants you might ask
Actually all no, witch fingers is just a grape with elongated phenotype, or in laymen term elongated appearance. This breed of strain is intentionally generated by selective breeding, just like how traditional farmers do it. Isolating sweet plants and have the flowers pollenate the same plant to create a pure breed.
This is the work done by Dr David Cain, he also had works with creating other different variety of seedless plants!! So next time when you eat some sweet/ seedless or funny looking witch fingers, remember some plant biologist are doing big efforts in making the world better place to be.
If you guys are interested I can talk about genetic modified organism next time.
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Can I understand it as a genetic modification in a natural way🤔🤔
It looks weird but I'd like to try~
Not really genetic modification, genetic modification usually implies transferring genes that are not innate to that species to that species, while selective breeding is enhancing the existing genes of a particular trait.
Hypothetical example (ignore all reality)
transferring chlorophyll genes from plants to us and make our skin green = genetic modification
naturally found new skin color human and cross breed with others to make skin green = selective breeding
Got it!! Thank you for the explanation!!
Nothing happier than reading an interesting post, learn new things, and interact with users on steemit! ^^ Great post!
Natural does not at all mean safer, you realize that right? Traditional plant breeding (which also creates GMO) creates sometimes toxic plants. People find out when they eat them and get sick :)
Lab made GMO, is significantly safer (depending on the modification of course, you could make it not safe...).
Oh true🤦 I just focused on GMO may not 100% no harm to human (rumor? I am outdated). Thanks for point out that!!
There is no technology with out potential upsides and drawbacks. GMO both traditional and molecular-biology induced are no exceptions to this :)
Cheers.
Exactly, natural selective breeding doesn't mean the breed of plants are better anyway, as self/ close relative breeding often express recessive disease characters.
Lab made GMO are highly regulated that's why they are generally safer to humans, but may not be 100% safe for natural environments, after all many things interacts within an ecosystem and no scientists could predict everything.
But I would also like to give an example of Brazilian Killer bees, a perfect example of wrong type of cross breeding that went out of the breeder's expectations. The aim was to create more high honey yielding bees with tougher environmental resistance, but turns out the crossing made the bees very provocative and defensive that they attack upon minor disturbance.
And after all, we are just part of the nature, so we should always respect nature~