The company based in Idaho that genetically modified potatoes and brought them to the market announced plans to do the same with strawberries. On Thursday, they signed an agreement to help a California-based plant breeding company grow strawberries. They say the product will stay fresh longer and have longer growing seasons.
The privately held companies J.R. Simplot Company and Plant Sciences Inc, said they plan to launch the first gene-edited strawberries commercially within a few years. In 2020. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. growers produced US$2.2. Billion in strawberries, mostly in California. They said that consumers discarded roughly 35 per cent of the crop due to spoilage.
Simplot and Plant Sciences said their genetically modified version will help reduce all that waste. The strawberries will contain genes from only strawberries that have desirable traits that have been cultivated over decades. Doug Cole, the director of Marketing and Biotech Affairs at Simplot explained “It’s the same technology we’re working on with potatoes…, we have the opportunity to do that with this technology.”
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