Purple GMO Tomato Seeds

[roadrunner]

Anyone now can buy GMO Tomato seeds. This has been around for nearly a couple years, but this is the first in-depth discussion I've heard.

BTW, I know tomatoes are botanically considered fruits, but since most people think of them mostly in the culinary use, I put it in the Vegetables forum.

 

[Tetters]

I honestly believe that our wonderful planet was really expertly designed. The fact that animal and plant species are dying off all over the globe is due to the fact that its inhabitants think they are more clever than the God who made them. The more that our food crops live in harmony with the wildlife around them including indigenous animals and other plants, the more ''plenty'' we enjoy. We have a diversity of climates and creatures, as well as crops, throughout the world - all suited to their own environment.
For this reason, there are some more discerning gardeners who recognise these facts, grow in accordance with them, and in harmony with all necessary factors to ensure satisfactory husbandry, and use the tools already available to sustain their crops. Crops that are suited to the area where they have always grown. These are tougher crops, and ones that can survive the odds. Sadly the ''scientists'' who meddle with this system are actually destroying what cannot be superseded - improved on.
I prefer to use heirloom seeds. I'll keep my tomatoes red

 

[Anniekay]

Firefly petunias are GMO. They took genes from a mushroom that glows in the dark to make this petunia, particularly the flower buds, glow in the dark. But, I'm not paying 30 bucks for a petunia that I have to go outside, in the dark, to see glow. Kind of a waste of money.

That said, I'm not against GMO so long as it improves viability, disease resistance, taste and fruit production. After all, since I believe in the Ancient Alien theory, I also believe that we've been genetically modified. After all, carrots were never orange until they were bred to be orange and we don't fuss about that.

Any kind of breeding of plants is to select for better outcomes and has gone on since humans started raising their own food. That type of cross breeding isn't too much different from genetic modification. We crossbreed animals, veg, and fruits all the time. I think there's way too much hype about it being "bad". What's bad is to not continue to improve plants because we have new diseases that develop spontaneously which can decimate an entire genus of plants. Why not strive for better and better crops?

 

[olly-buckle]

I honestly believe that our wonderful planet was really expertly designed. The fact that animal and plant species are dying off all over the globe is due to the fact that its inhabitants think they are more clever than the God who made them. The more that our food crops live in harmony with the wildlife around them including indigenous animals and other plants, the more ''plenty'' we enjoy. We have a diversity of climates and creatures, as well as crops, throughout the world - all suited to their own environment.
For this reason, there are some more discerning gardeners who recognise these facts, grow in accordance with them, and in harmony with all necessary factors to ensure satisfactory husbandry, and use the tools already available to sustain their crops. Crops that are suited to the area where they have always grown. These are tougher crops, and ones that can survive the odds. Sadly the ''scientists'' who meddle with this system are actually destroying what cannot be superseded - improved on.
I prefer to use heirloom seeds. I'll keep my tomatoes red

'Heirloom' simply means they grow true from seed, but they are still bred varieties, I grow Moneymaker, originally bred in the early 1900's. The wild plants bear a pea sized fruit and actually grow in a diversity of different conditions, from near desert to humid jungle to Andean mountains, but humans had 'meddled' with them before Europeans ever got to South America. We started off 'meddling' with seeds almost 4,000 years ago, wheat and rye are not 'natural' wild plants, I would be willing to bet that is true of almost every foodstuff we grow or eat, recent developments just mean we have got better at it, like wheat that grows more than one ear, and has probably saved literally billions of people from dying of starvation and famine.

 

[Zigs]

It's a wonderful thing that we've developed different strains of food crops by crossing them over the millenia. We'd probably hardly recognise some of the original plants. Wild Carrot springs to mind, it's a world away from the big orange things we buy in the shops.

But up until recently it was just that, crossing things that would naturally cross with each other to get hybrids or new, stable varieties.

Taking a gene out of one organism and splicing it into another is totally new.

We really can't put our hands on our hearts and say it's safe to do this and it won't cause any problems in the future because we simply don't know.

We can't possibly have tested or even thought of all the things that might happen if something we bio engineered cross pollinated with something we weren't expecting.

From memory, I can think of at least one cross that resulted in bad results when some sea grass from the Americas got dragged across the Atlantic to Southampton water in England on a ship's propeller. It crossed with our local sea grass and made a vigorous hybrid that I believe still clogs up estuaries to this day.

Now what if a latent gene in the Solenacea family (tomatoes and deadly nightshade family) crossed with another crop to make it toxic to us or bees?

 

[Tetters]

It's a wonderful thing that we've developed different strains of food crops by crossing them over the millenia. We'd probably hardly recognise some of the original plants. Wild Carrot springs to mind, it's a world away from the big orange things we buy in the shops.

But up until recently it was just that, crossing things that would naturally cross with each other to get hybrids or new, stable varieties.

Taking a gene out of one organism and splicing it into another is totally new.

We really can't put our hands on our hearts and say it's safe to do this and it won't cause any problems in the future because we simply don't know.

We can't possibly have tested or even thought of all the things that might happen if something we bio engineered cross pollinated with something we weren't expecting.

From memory, I can think of at least one cross that resulted in bad results when some sea grass from the Americas got dragged across the Atlantic to Southampton water in England on a ship's propeller. It crossed with our local sea grass and made a vigorous hybrid that I believe still clogs up estuaries to this day.

Now what if a latent gene in the Solenacea family (tomatoes and deadly nightshade family) crossed with another crop to make it toxic to us or bees?

Thanks for that bit of help Zigs. I wasn't quite sure how to put it. That really covers the ''Genetic'' bit I was meaning. Yep, - what he put @olly-buckle we were not messing about with gene therapy 4000 years ago were we.

 

[Zigs]

Thanks for that bit of help Zigs. I wasn't quite sure how to put it. That really covers the ''Genetic'' bit I was meaning. Yep, - what he put @olly-buckle we were not messing about with gene therapy 4000 years ago were we.

No worries Tetters

Yep, there's crossing two types of grass to get a bigger seed and then there's this sort of thing...

In an experiment that could lead to mass production of strong, lightweight silk, scientists at a Canadian biotechnology company and a United States Army research center have spliced spider genes into cells from cows and hamsters and induced the cells to churn out silk. New York Times

 

[Tetters]

No worries Tetters

Yep, there's crossing two types of grass to get a bigger seed and then there's this sort of thing...

I think that sort of ''science'' has, maybe, gone a bit too far now.

 

[olly-buckle]

I don't think the bigger seeds come from crossing two wild grasses, rather from selecting the natural mutations and giving them an advantage by ploughing and weeding, but favourable mutations take a long time to turn up, I'm not against giving them a bit of help myself, but each to their own.

 

[Zigs]

I don't think the bigger seeds come from crossing two wild grasses, rather from selecting the natural mutations and giving them an advantage by ploughing and weeding, but favourable mutations take a long time to turn up, I'm not against giving them a bit of help myself, but each to their own.

Agreed Olly, you put it better than I did

Yep, a bit of help maybe but I'd draw the line at splicing in something that would never happen naturally.