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Plant breeding for consumer preferences

A plant scientist says the future of plant breeding starts with the consumer in mind.

Chairman of Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida Kevin Folta tells Brownfield plant breeding has traditionally been for the benefit of farmers but moving forward he believes consumer preferences will lead variety improvement. Folta says the two major paths science is investigating currently are gene editing and genome-wide selection.  “You’re seeing changes to single genes in plants almost every day now at least in the scientific literature.  It remains to be seen how this will be regulated so nothing has gone commercial yet.”

He says genome -wide selection uses DNA information to select breeding crosses while gene editing makes small changes to the actual DNA. At the same time, Folta says researchers are also manipulating environmental factors rather than genetics.  “We’re using narrow bandwidth light, so you can think about LEDs, where we’re able to provide discrete wavelengths of blue, or UV, or red, or far-red invisible light we can’t even see off of the red spectrum that gives the plant instructions and allows us to control how the plant tastes, the pigments that color it, maybe even the flavors.”

But, he says public perception will continue to be critical for advances in genetic engineering to become mainstream.

Futla spoke with Brownfield during this week’s Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

AUDIO: Interview with Kevin Folta