Scientists have just genetically modified cherry tomatoes to make them easier to grow, and the future applications could include making them more viable for indoor farming and even space travel, their creators say.
The scientists, working out of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, used a gene-editing technology called CRISPR to make changes to three key genes within the cherry tomatoes’ DNA. Two of those genes are responsible for when the plant stops growing and starts flowering and fruiting. The third controls the length of the plant’s stem.
The end result is a more compact cherry tomato plant that grows in clusters, like grapes, and also more quickly than unmodified cherry tomatoes, in only around 40 days. These changes make the tomatoes easier to grow in smaller, controlled spaces, like indoor farms, urban rooftop farms, and even spaceships. The scientists published their results in a paper in Nature Biotechnology.
Read the full article at geneticliteracyproject.org