Should Switzerland make use of new plant breeding techniques to make agriculture more sustainable? Pictured: a test field with different wheat varieties. (Image: Andreas Hund)
Should Switzerland make use of new plant breeding techniques to make agriculture more sustainable? Pictured: a test field with different wheat varieties. (Image: Andreas Hund) - Today, molecular genetic methods can be used to breed sustainable crops - such as multinutrient rice. Researchers are calling for the risk of new plant varieties to be assessed not on the basis of the breeding method, but on the basis of their characteristics. When it comes to food, many people yearn for nature in its most pristine state. The thinking is that natural products are somehow better and healthier. Organic food is marketed through an idealised vision of agriculture in which quasi-natural methods are used to produce natural food, and tools such as genetic engineering are frowned upon as a form of artificial meddling. Yet this romanticised view of nature is deceptive.
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