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A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

nytimes.com

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Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#151

Post by evgen »

jcoffland wrote: post #132
debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.

The real pro trick is to not put a lid on the pan. Instead use an inverted metal colander. You will get some small amount of oil on your stove top but it's worth it. This method allows the water vapor to escape which yields much lighter airier popcorn but unlike an air popper you still get all the flavor from the oil. Toasted sesame oil or coconut oil are really good.

Try a whirley-pop popper. It has vents at the top to let out the steam and a hand-cranked rotor to agitate the popcorn as it is popping so that the unpopped kernels fall to the bottom to finish cooking.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#152

Post by tstactplsignore »

samirillian wrote: post #143
tstactplsignore wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>dangers of monocropping Nothing to do with biotechnology or genome editing. In fact both technologies can and will be used to make crops more diverse. >turning plants into intellectual property There are specific plant breeds that are already closely guarded IP. Not to mention, this is like being against software because software patents exist. >whatever the hell happened to pugs Selective breeding? That's what is r…

> Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology. Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology. On reflection, the two points that really bother me. a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of s…

>genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of season." They're always fixes that allow the consumer to remain as passive as possible.

I think this is because biotechnology is in its infancy, and these sort of things tend to be pretty low hanging fruit that increase sales. I'm not a big fan either- I'm certainly not a big fan of corporate profits and corporate motives. The GMO world is corporate right now because it still requires substantial monetary investment- in the future technology will become so simplified that nonprofits and university scientists will be able to bring non-corporate GMOs to market in the way we have open source software today.

Here are some more positive gmo projects on the horizon:

C4 rice: http://c4rice.irri.org/index.php/component/content/article/1...

More efficient photosynthesis:https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/science/gmo-foods-phot...

Disease resistant Cassava:http://staskawiczlab.berkeley.edu/michael-gomez-wins-prize-h...

Disease resistant tomatoes: http://staskawiczlab.berkeley.edu/bacterial-spot-tomatoes

Drought resistant plants in particular will be extremely important for fighting climate change: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/2015/03/31/g...

>b) I've never hear a single scientist make a good argument against GMOs. What, like you can't come up with a single possible downside?

It is difficult to come up with an argument "against GMOs", because most definitions of the term have no ingerent biological meaning. If I edit a single base pair of a plant using crispr-cas9, is that a GMO? How is that different than breeding this plant until I get that base pair change by chance? If I edit an entire gene of a plant with crispr-cas9 to match the gene of another organism, how is that different from inserting the gene from that organism into this plant in the right spot?

I personally can't contemplate a general purpose argument against GMOs that doesn't apply to traditional mutagenesis and hybridization experiments: those are really like randomly messing with genes with no idea what you're doing- biotechnology targets systems we understand.

However, the best arguments against GMOs are those concerned with corporate influence. Yes, we do not want big corporations completely controlling our agricultural system (as they do now), especially when their interests do not align with society's. We want a biotechnology more like the open source world and startup world to keep agriculture innovative and open.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#153

Post by KingMob »

samirillian wrote: post #143
tstactplsignore wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>dangers of monocropping Nothing to do with biotechnology or genome editing. In fact both technologies can and will be used to make crops more diverse. >turning plants into intellectual property There are specific plant breeds that are already closely guarded IP. Not to mention, this is like being against software because software patents exist. >whatever the hell happened to pugs Selective breeding? That's what is r…

> Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology. Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology. On reflection, the two points that really bother me. a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of s…

The best argument against GMOs are Black Swans, which, due to their rarity, don't appear often/soon enough to dissuade people in advance. Probably 99.99999% of GMOs are fine, but that one in a million will have disastrous consequences for an ecosystem. It could also be that since our knowledge of human biology is still woefully incomplete, we optimize for the wrong things, leading to lower overall health (we've probably already done this without GMOs just by selecting for size/sturdiness over nutrients.) Multiply the complexity of individual organisms with entire ecosystems, and the reality is we just can't predict the likelihood of an adverse outcome at all.

This would be fine if we had a backup Earth. I'm all in favor of biotech on Mars, isolated moon labs, and interstellar colonies, if we had any. But the current irreplaceable nature of Earth means we have to be extra cautious with it. Our usual standards are insufficient, and thinking otherwise is hubris.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#154

Post by Nursie »

skykooler wrote: post #148
Nursie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are loads of awesome bananas out there, they just either aren't so soft and sweet or don't ship well. Within the last year I have had lady-finger, apple and Fe'i bananas and various plantains. All delicious! I want to try red and blue/ice-cream but am having trouble finding them in the UK or on my travels...

But, as you say, none of these are a good substitute Cavendish, though they may be fine bananas in their own right.

Apple and lady-finger I have had in the UK, seemed to ship OK and tasted good.

They were much smaller. Red Daccas (the red banana) are commercially available in some countries like Australia, but probably because they grow them.

I think commercial development of a "Cavendish Replacement" ought to be a real plan to diversify the banana business. Monocultures are inherently troublesome. If we could lose this meme in the Europe and North America that there is such a thing as "a banana" and start eating different varieties, I think that would be great.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#155

Post by tstactplsignore »

KingMob wrote: post #153
samirillian wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there anything you and I can talk about that would convince you of not being anti-biotechnology. Sure. I'm not strongly anti-biotechnology. On reflection, the two points that really bother me. a) genetic modifications are usually for stuff like "keeping potatoes from bruising because people don't like the look of bruised potatoes." Or "keeping tomatoes flavorful so people can keep mindlessly buying them out of s…

The best argument against GMOs are Black Swans, which, due to their rarity, don't appear often/soon enough to dissuade people in advance. Probably 99.99999% of GMOs are fine, but that one in a million will have disastrous consequences for an ecosystem. It could also be that since our knowledge of human biology is still woefully incomplete, we optimize for the wrong things, leading to lower overall health (we've proba…

>Probably 99.99999% of GMOs are fine, but that one in a million will have disastrous consequences for an ecosystem.

This really doesn't make any biological sense and kind of goes against all of our understanding of evolution and ecology. Can you describe this theoretical situation in any kind of detail? I find it completely incoherent and unimaginable.

GMOs have a huge advantage over traditional methods of crop development because they can be engineered to be safer: they can be designed to not survive off of human farms, and not reproduce with wild plants, or have other safety measures.

The idea that we can create a single organism that could cause an ecological catastrophe (bigger than any of the ecological harm caused by simply moving around invasive natural species) is science fiction; the idea that we could do so accidentally while trying to create food to eat is a complete delusion. We've already created outlandish, strange, non-natural super plants: every single vegetable that you and I eat. We did so with no regard to safety, nor understanding of what we were doing. GMOs only improve enormously on this process.

Again, the utter failure of this argument is apparent in how it can be applied to any technology: we shouldn't make software because that 1 in a million program could destroy the power grid / Internet / cause nuclear war, we shouldn't make medicine because that 1 in a million vaccine will cause people to drop dead en masse 10 years down the road, etc. If those seem preposterous to you, I assure you that to plant scientists, geneticists, and EcoEvo folks, your worry seems equally preposterous.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#156

Post by bluGill »

kentosi wrote: post #41
bluGill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mistaking organic for ripe nutritious food. Organic just limits some specific chemicals. That is it. You can replaces those limited chemicals with other "natural" chemicals which may be (and often are) much more harmful. Organic does not save the earth. Sometimes is does, but other times it is more harmful than the conventional practice. Organic is not more nutritious. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is…

Can you back the claim up that natural chemicals are being used and are harmful? I thought the whole point of organic is that there are no pesticides being used in the first place.

Non-organic: roundup (from http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-gly...) The toxicity of the technical product (glyphosate) and the formulated product (Roundup) is nearly the same. The acute oral LD50 in the rat is 5,600 mg/kg [Rat]

Organic: vinegar (http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9922769) (LD50): 3310 mg/kg [Rat]

Of course there are hundreds of different chemicals to look at, and LD50 is not the only measure. It is enough to back up my claim though.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#157

Post by namlem »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #10

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn , which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat fl…

Canned tomatoes are still less flavorful breeds, they're just fully ripened.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#158

Post by jcoffland »

evgen wrote: post #151
jcoffland wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real pro trick is to not put a lid on the pan. Instead use an inverted metal colander. You will get some small amount of oil on your stove top but it's worth it. This method allows the water vapor to escape which yields much lighter airier popcorn but unlike an air popper you still get all the flavor from the oil. Toasted sesame oil or coconut oil are really good.

Try a whirley-pop popper. It has vents at the top to let out the steam and a hand-cranked rotor to agitate the popcorn as it is popping so that the unpopped kernels fall to the bottom to finish cooking.

I find that I can get near 100% yield with only minimal agitation in a regular pan. The popcorn popping provides plenty of agitation on it's own.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#159

Post by oppositelock »

koliber wrote: post #129
oppositelock wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next ge…

You mention that there are plenty of heirloom tomatoes that area easy to grow. Two sentences later you say that you can't replant the seeds because they are F1 hybrids. I think a clarification is in order. The general consensus is that if a tomato is an heirloom it is not a hybrid, and vice versa. I have had excellent luck with growing plants from collected seeds for any of the heirloom tomatoes I've grown. With hybr…

Sorry, I plant both. I can plant harvested heirloom seeds (but find it more convenient to buy them). The Early Girl tomatoes, whose flavor I really like that I mentioned are hybrids which don't re-plant well.

I agree, that heirlooms are more difficult to keep happy - they're just more sensitive to "stuff".

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