Gene editing opens doors to seedless fruit with no need for bees
DAILY NEWS 11 April 2017 Something’s missing… Halfdark/plainpicture BY Alice Klein Don’t like the seeds in tomatoes? You might be pleased to know that seedless ones have been created by gene editing. The technique will make it possible to make a much wider range of seedless fruits than is currently available – and also means farmers might not have to rely on declining bee populations. Whether we ever see such fruits on supermarket shelves, however, may depend on how regulators decide to treat gene-edited crops. Several types of seedless fruits, from bananas to cucumbers to grapes, are already widely available, but many have come about by luck rather than design. Seedless bananas are the result of accidental crosses between subspecies , for instance, while other seedless fruits stem from spontaneous mutations. There are a few seedless varieties of tomato, but they have taken breeders ma...