Letting plants grow their own pesticides for killing of things that eat the plants sounds to me like a bad strategy if you want healthy food. It makes things much easier for the farmer, but to me it doesn’t sound like a road that we should go on.
This is more or less the opposite of what we actually actually use genetic engineering of crops for. Production of pesticides isn’t something that plants were incapable of until we started tinkering with their genes, it’s something they’ve been doing for hundreds of millions of years. Plants in nature have to deal with tradeoffs between producing their own natural pesticides and using their biological resources for other things, such as more rapid growth, greater drought resistance, etc. In general, genetically engineered plants actually have less innate pest resistance, which farmers then compensate for by spraying pesticides onto them, because it allows them to trade off that natural pesticide production for faster growth.
In general, genetically engineered plants actually have less innate pest resistance, which farmers then compensate for by spraying pesticides onto them, because it allows them to trade off that natural pesticide production for faster growth.
ChristianKl may be thinking of Bt corn (maize) and, for instance, the Starlink corn recall. Bt corn certainly does express a pesticide, namely Bacillus thuringiensis toxin.
This is more or less the opposite of what we actually actually use genetic engineering of crops for. Production of pesticides isn’t something that plants were incapable of until we started tinkering with their genes, it’s something they’ve been doing for hundreds of millions of years. Plants in nature have to deal with tradeoffs between producing their own natural pesticides and using their biological resources for other things, such as more rapid growth, greater drought resistance, etc. In general, genetically engineered plants actually have less innate pest resistance, which farmers then compensate for by spraying pesticides onto them, because it allows them to trade off that natural pesticide production for faster growth.
ChristianKl may be thinking of Bt corn (maize) and, for instance, the Starlink corn recall. Bt corn certainly does express a pesticide, namely Bacillus thuringiensis toxin.