Basic gist is that certain strains of grasses had additional “supporting cells” for the stomata. The result was a much more efficient gas exchange and better health for the grasses.
The question is… could we transfer these genes to cannabis? Would it be a game changer? Or would it be only a slight improvement?
What are your thoughts?
Round-up Ready Kush? Are you ready for that?
I think we need to be very cautious about crossing different genes into the Cannabis pool for a number of reasons:
Monsanto and Dow Chemicals etc will own it. Who else has multi-billion dollar research budgets and all the labs and tech in place for this sort of stuff.
Do we want to introduce stuff into cannabis that could cause significant health issues - many people are allergic to grasses - imagine if we introduce those genes and then someone with an allergy smokes or ingests it and goes into anaphylactic shock… If you look at the history of how modern wheat has evolved - they introduced a number of genes from grasses into it - and people have increasing rates of gluten intolerance.
New genes = new pests, stronger pests - resorting to increased chemicals (look at BT corn etc).
… and the list could go on and on…
shudder
It’s bad enough to have that in the food supply, let alone smoking it.
It is potentially very scary. Monsanto could very rapidly come into the legalized market and buy up a large chunk of the seed companies, start patenting the seed stock and before you know it Cannabis has been totally corrupted to being just another corporate industrial agricultural product with a small set of artisinal producers trying to keep it ‘real’.
It has happened with every other agricultural product…
and now a precedent has been set…
Definitely a consideration. Modifying any organism carries environmental risks. However, in the case of improving stomata, I can’t think of any particular problem that plants don’t already face.
That depends which side of the agri-corporate/military-industrial food chain you are on. Monsanto at it’s roots is a ruthless company that has taken no prisoners and done all it can to subvert food production to it’s own profit. As a farmer for many many years I’ve seen it first hand - the legal team of Monsanto is a fearful device.
Part of the issue with modern north america wheat is twofold - it was crossed with a grass which has brought the size of the plant down, increased yields and made it easier to manage in an industrial process, however it has potentially introduced issues with reactions - I agree it is not the gluten intolerance - it is the other things we have added to the wheat. Wheat today is not the wheat of our ancestors. It is no longer the 'golden staff of life". The second issue with north american wheat is that it is generally desiccated with Roundup pre-harvest to kill the plant, which allows for an easier harvest, harder kernels etc. It seems that there is increasing evidence that what people think of as gluten intolerance is more likely to be a herbicide or other additions.
GMO’s have been primarily field tested on the populace of north america over the last 20 years. The consumers are the lab rats.
