Gene Editing Is About to Supercharge Agriculture

Gene Editing Is About to Supercharge Agriculture
AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File

Corn isn't the sexiest crop but it's one of the most important. It's the most abundant grain on Earth, used as food and biofuel around the globe. In ancient times, Mesoamericans thrived on it, waged wars over it. Their myths claimed corn was the matter from which gods created mankind itself.

But, just as corn helped create these civilizations, these civilizations helped create corn through meticulous selective breeding. Today's grain hardly resembles its ancestors. Compared to the wild plant first cultivated by ancient Mexicans some ten thousand years ago, modern corn is a super mutant.

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