Every crop & livestock that we raise today has been domesticated from the wild, genetically altered through deliberate selection. Here’s a thread of what we eat that were modified over millennia but not “engineered” through biotech from @cracked Handful of wild almonds can kill you. Thank the first person who spotted a non-poisonous mutant tree in Persia, now you have trail mix!

If you publish your paper in GM Crops & Food by @tandfbiosci, it will be noticed, well-read, and well-cited! Here are some of our top papers from the journal Papers published in 'GM Crops & Food' will be mentioned in news articles, blogs, social media postings, patents, policy documents, Wikipedia and more! So, please submit your manuscript on GM Crops or Gene Editing research at tandfonline.com/journals/kgmc20

Metformin, the wonder diabetes drug, also implicated in protecting against cancer - has a fascinating backstory. - Thread!

link.springer.com/content/pdf/10… The weed that gave us the drug! Galega officinalis, the herbal lineage of metformin, is also known as goat’s rue, French lilac, Italian fitch, Spanish sainfoin or professor weed. This plant was used as a traditional medicine in medieval Europe; it is now a noxious weed

Where's all the arable land in the world! 99% of our calories from land folks and it is very, very limited – Only 18% of our land surface is highly fertile, without soil problems like salinity, acidity, arid etc. Why we need innovation like GM crops and gene editing to feed us Slide stolen from then EU science chief Ann Glover's presentation in 2014

Happy tenth birthday CRISPR tech! Now that we have had a decade of genome editing, what’s in store for the next ten years? ⁦@doudna_lab⁩ tells us! science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… The past decade of CRISPR has focused on building the platforms for generating gene knockouts, creating knockout mice, genetic screening,& multiplexed editing. Medicine & ag applications serve as the focus for the next decade as society’s demands drive innovation in CRISPR tech

Today is #WorldCottonDay. Here’s Bt cotton (left) with Non-GMO cotton on right! Which cotton would you rather celebrate the #worldcottonday2022 with? A Bt cotton field in Australia #WorldCottonDay

https://twitter.com/AgBioWorld/status/1541764624286158848

Iranian women burning their headscarves after a 22-year old woman died in “morality police” custody, arrested for not covering her head properly

More Iranian protest videos across that country imgur.com/gallery/vHqzfHx Tehran People standing up against the regime forces pushing them back screaming "Without Honor"

Bull crap, A Vandanaesque diatribe cloaked as a scholarly article. Bill Gates has spent $6 billion of his personal wealth to bring much needed infusion of science & innovation to help solve problems of food & agriculture in the developing world, a hero! tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… @BillGates instead is demonized here for his philanthropic work as philanthocapitalism, shoving Western ideas down the throat of poor third world peasants, not supporting agroecology. Oh, please!

Top row is GM corn, bottom is Non-GMO corn, not sprayed with pesticide or fungicide. Bottom corn is infected with fungi causing carcinogenic mycotoxins that can kill the livestock; cause esophageal cancer & neural tube defects in humans
geneticliteracyproject.org/2022/08/04/vie…
Aflatoxin causes liver cancer, immune system dysfunction, growth impairment in humans and animals. IARC classified aflatoxins as a Group 1 carcinogen. Between 25,000 and 155,000 aflatoxin-related liver cancer cases occur worldwide every year

nature.com/articles/s4159…

Parenthetically, nobody told Sri Lanka beforehand that their all-organic experiment would end in disaster. It was anti-GMO “rock star” Vandana Shiva who encouraged the country to take the dramatic steps it took. acsh.org/news/2022/07/1… Sri Lanka ran an evil experiment on its citizens last year. Under the sway of nitwit organic-food activists, the government banned imports of synthetic pesticides & fertilizers to transition the country to all-organic ag, leaving the farmers without access to the vital tools

" Next time you think of reaching for the higher-priced produce on your supermarket’s “organic” shelf, spare a moment’s thought for the people of Sri Lanka. Broadly speaking, the rise of the organic-food fetish has been bad for poor people " @DougSaunders
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl… "You don’t need to go to South Asia to see that. Just look at the fact that every supermarket now features well-promoted shelves of foods that cost three or four times as much as the otherwise identical stuff in the lower bins"

A new US report warns that China is stealing GMO secrets to advance its food security, even to wage war using GM technology! 🤨 rt.com/news/556232-ch… Darn, @Twitter is flagging me because I linked to Russian misinformation site. Here, the link to original US report

uscc.gov/sites/default/…

A fascinating story of a quest to revive a lost fabric with clever science! Nearly 200 years ago, Dhaka muslin was the most valuable fabric on the planet. Then it was lost altogether. How did this happen? And can we bring it back? ⁦@ZariaGorvett⁩ ⁦ bbc.com/future/article… It was not like the muslin of today. Made via an elaborate, 16-step process with a rare cotton that only grew along the banks of the holy Meghna river, cloth was considered one of the great treasures of the age. It had a truly global patronage, stretching back thousands of years

Organic movement is simply marketing disguised as a grassroots movement relying on the ignorance of its own consumers. It survives by distorting science, promoting a false narrative that organic food is safer or is more nutritional than conventional foods mylespower.co.uk/2022/07/23/van… Sri Lankan President showed us what such a world would look like when he attempted to transition the country’s farmers to organic ag. The result was an economic & humanitarian crisis in which Sri Lanka lost its food security, half a million people pushed into poverty. @powerm1985

Supercharged biotech rice yields 40% more grain
Genetic tweak may boost photosynthesis and fertilizer absorption in wheat, other crops, too
science.org/content/articl… By giving a Chinese rice variety a second copy of one of its own genes, researchers have boosted its yield by up to 40%. The change helps the plant absorb more fertilizer, boosts photosynthesis, and accelerates flowering, all of which could contribute to larger harvests

Comparing GM crops, traditional breeding, mutagenesis and genome editing. Infographics for your next presentation Crop modification techniques

The organic cotton movement in India appears to be booming, but much of this growth is fake, say those who source, process and grow the cotton. That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think nytimes.com/2022/02/13/wor… “What the farmers did not know, however, was that growing without pesticides and fossil-fuel fertilizer produces on average 28 percent lower yields than conventional cotton farming; that organic cotton seeds produce lower quality, shorter fibers”

My graduate student’s sister Prathyusha from India did this sand art for our wedding anniversary @YaswanthInabat3 Then and now!

Canada/USA life expectancy by province/state Life expectancy trend in Canada since 1800

‘Mother Mary’ gene, a holy grail of apomixis, discovered in plants! The breakthrough discovery may help produce elite & hybrid plants without sex. The gene that allows flowers to form embryos in the uterus of plants without pollination.

baltimoregaylife.com/the-main-gene-… Original paper After a genetically controlled parthenogenesis process, the discovered gene was renamed PAR. Egg cells develop into plant embryos without pollination. May lead to important discoveries in plant breeding in the years to come.

nature.com/articles/s4158…

Chili peppers produce the pungent vanilloid compound capsaicin, which offers protection from predatory mammals. Birds are indifferent to the pain-producing effects of capsaicin and therefore serve as vectors for seed dispersal.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Seeds pass through a birds’ digestive system, come out unharmed; mammals the seeds are broken down by the acidic juices during digestion. Chili plants evolved to produce capsaicin as a repellent for animals, whilst still allowing birds to eat their seeds

bbc.co.uk/worldservice/s…