Shit, looks like GM wheat on the horizon.

[no_hypocrisy]

Scientists say they're close to producing new "super varieties" of wheat that will resist a virulent fungus while boosting yields up to 15 percent, potentially easing a deadly threat to the world's food supply.

The research is part of a global drive to protect wheat crops from the Ug99 strain of stem rust. It will be presented next week at a conference in St. Paul that's part of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, based at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., organizers said Thursday.

Scientists will also report that Ug99 variants are becoming increasingly virulent and are being carried by the winds beyond Uganda and other East African countries where they were first identified in 1999. Once infected with the deadly fungus, wheat plants become covered in reddish-brown blisters.

According to a news release issued by the initiative ahead of the symposium, the fungus has now spread across all of eastern and southern Africa, and it might just be a matter of time before it reaches India or Pakistan, and even Australia and the Americas.

-more-


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110610/ap_on_sc/us_wheat_rust

[skepticscott]

1. We've had GM wheat for centuries

Like to imagine what the price of bread would be without it?

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Go Big Red! nt

[FLAprogressive]

3. Will the wheat be a Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, or Cadillac?

[endless october]

4. if your corn doesn't look like this

http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/185492/large/E9000480-Remains_of_ancient_maize_plant,_Peru-SPL.jpg

then it's genetically engineered.

and has been for a couple thousand years.

we're all gonna die. but, thankfully, not at birth or at age 40, like "natural" humans did.

[Maru Kitteh]

5. Wheat has been genetically modified for THOUSANDS of years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat#Origin

[TheMadMonk]

6. Selectively bred. Just as has been done for thousands of years.

All our grain crops (some for longer than others), every animal we've ever domesticated. Even ourselves. (Though lately it seems we've been selecting mainly for stupidity.)

Fruits and flowers.