GMO Tobacco Discovery Could Lead To Safer Insecticides

Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - 11:10 in Mathematics & Economics

Genetic engineering of tobacco plants so that they produce moth pheromones demonstrates the potential of genetically modified plants to act as factories for the synthesis of insect pheromones, write the authors of a Nature Communications paper.Pheromones are widely used as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional pesticides for trapping insects and the new work presents an opportunity for the cost-effective production of an environmentally safe alternative to insecticides. The demographic most likely to ban GMOs and tobacco aren't going to be happy, but they aren't happy with most science. Maybe if the work were done with marijuana it would be more acceptable. read more

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