Whatever your feelings on GM, there is a danger in engineering a
super-plant, in that it will behave like a
super-plant, and so will
become a highly invasive and dominant species
causing significant
problems to indigenous plants.
Far better to concentrate on the highly varied,
and
in many cases
under-utilized, widely available resources we
already have.
OFF-TOPIC (I think most genetic codes that have
been published (i.e.
peer reviewed in respected jornals) are freely
available on the
internet, including that of a model plant.)End!
RG
Richard FitzGibbon wrote:
OK group, here it is:
In the 70's I read that a team of (New Mexico?) Ag
students discovered the ancient ansestor of modern
corn plant in the Sonoran Desert. It only grew 4
or 5 kernnels on a very small mis-shapen cob. But
it grew in the DESERT.
In the 80's a (Florida?) Ag prof. was reported
to hawe said that the common pond cattail contained
more SUGAR per kilogram than any other plant.
In the early 90's I read a report from a committee
of geneticists that a plant could be GENETICALLY
ALTERED to produce enough sugar to make
distillation of ethanol economically feasable.
I have no idea where these atatements are true or
not. I was not interested it the stuff at the
time, so nothing remains but isolated memories.
These memories are in my head. I have no proof
they occured. Now I want to confirm them or discard
them. The tiny tread that connects these memories
is the basis of my book.
Anyone ever read these statemnts? Know about them?
So consider this, if a plant could be genetically
bio-engineered to have the following characteristics:
to grow in semiarid areas, to be easy to harvest, to
never need cultivation, to be extremely high in
sucrose and grow rapidly all year, then, the oil
cartel would collapse, the skies would clear, global
warming would stop and the cost of all
manufactured goods prices would decrease. Of
course, the geneticist(s) would face some withering
resistance from the oil cartel. And I suspect they
already have.
I believe genecists are working on this precise
task, someplace on earth, probably not in an oil
producing nation or state (duh).
My book is about the problems of a Sprint car
driving physician (Yea!!!) releasing genetic
research on the internet (the geeks plant genetic
code, Yea!!!) in the face of oppposition from oil
interests (Boo!!!).
I think this is an important time in history.
Don't give up.
R.D. FitzGibbon
Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
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