A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA

They're only identical within a cultivar, right? If the fruits are different (e.g. navel vs. mandarin) then the genes must be different.

> Somewhat related is how they and much other modern agriculture is done - huge fields of exactly the same species only - a monoculture. This too makes it easy for invaders. The fix of multiple species being grown together is often shown to work, but makes the farming and harvesting considerably more complicated and expensive.

It's not necessarily optional. Humans have cultivated the food supply through cross breeding since we have been around and even common foods aren't "natural" anymore. A lot of what we like to eat doesn't like to reproduce itself so we end up reproducing what we like to eat.

Lack of genetic diversity is also the reason the banana is in danger (again).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

I don't think the hysteria is anti-scientific. It is more a suspicion of agricultural corporations, of secrecy and of American companies. The perception of Monsanto is an excellent example. Corporate paternalism is not appreciated. Consider why companies lobbied so hard for GMO to not be labelled as such.

If almost every product was labelled as GMO then after a while consumers would not care. They would be able to make their own choices about "regular" versus GMO. Instead the fight has been to "trust us" and to keep GMO secret.

"Known to the State of California to cause cancer" is everywhere. No one bats an eyelid any more.

you say anti-scientific hysteria, I say reasonable fears regularly ignored by industry and whitewashed by an industry captured fda. example 1: bpa

from the wiki article [1]:

   In 2006, the US Government sponsored an assessment of the scientific 
   literature on BPA. Thirty-eight experts in fields involved with bisphenol A 
   gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to review several hundred studies on 
   BPA, many conducted by members of the group. At the end of the meeting, the 
   group issued the Chapel Hill Consensus Statement,[100] which stated BPA at 
   concentrations found in the human body is associated with organizational 
   changes in the prostate, breast, testis, mammary glands, body size, brain 
   structure and chemistry, and behavior of laboratory animals.[101]

   The Chapel Hill Consensus Statement found that average levels in people are 
   above those that cause harm to many animals in laboratory experiments. They 
   noted that while BPA is not persistent in the environment or in humans, 
   biomonitoring surveys indicate that exposure is continuous, which is 
   problematic because acute animal exposure studies are used to estimate daily 
   human exposure to BPA, and no studies that had examined BPA pharmacokinetics 
   in animal models had followed continuous low-level exposures. They added 
   that measurement of BPA levels in serum and other body fluids suggests the 
   possibilities that BPA intake is much higher than accounted for, and/or that 
   BPA can bioaccumulate in some conditions (such as pregnancy).[100]
   
   A 2008 report by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human 
   Reproduction within the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is 
   within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, reported the 
   results of its exhaustive review of the literature. Its conclusions, 
   expressed relative to current estimates of general population exposure 
   levels in the U.S., were the following:

and yet bpa is still used. So when we hear that monsanto pinky-swears their experiments, even when they contaminate neighboring fields, are super duper safe, or orange growers promise up and down that, well, their genetic modifications they introduced to prevent their business from being destroyed are absolutely positively safe (we promise!)... forgive me for being skeptical.

Not to mention the freakout about labeling foods; if they weren't knowingly poisoning us, why exactly would corporations be so very afraid of properly labeling foods? Any reasonable adult should have his or her bullshit detector going off when they are told gmo is absolutely safe, but it's the end of the world if we tell people which foods have gmo ingredients so that they can choose what to eat.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

That's clearly wrong. You just have to actually read studies to find clear warnings about the toxicity of GMO. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512...

Expect a lot more: the banana for example that had it's reportedly most tasty variant (Gros Michel) gone extinct in the last century. The variant you are buying today (Cavendish) is under great strain and is likely to go down the same route.

Species have been disappearing long before humans existed, there is nothing new here. We have always developed close cultural ties to what we eat, this made changes expensive. Hard to imagine a world without orange juice, bananas, plum fruit or a tasty tomato. Our ancestors lacked the tools to prevent losses. We have it and this only makes the loss more painful.

>...and if I were a producer that discovered how to make a resistant orange by genetic engineering, I'd just do my best to spread the damn disease and wipe out natural oranges together with the competition, making more money to finance more genetic engineering research...

No, you'd be thrown in jail for bioterrorism. What you propose is seriously unethical, even if it weren't criminal. Furthermore, your attitude would convince much of the populace that people who promote GMO food are completely insane and unethical.

And how, exactly, do you propose to "limit" non-native plagues? Do you want to shut down the ports and airports?

What does non-native plagues mean to a fruit that was cultivated and spread by humans? The orange is already non-native everywhere it is grown.

It might happen. Or oranges might go extinct. There's no way to tell, and, frankly, I enjoy my orange juice.

Not very likely considering they are clones of each other. This is similar to the current dominant banana species being doomed.

What are you trying to say? Maybe you can grow an orange but I can't, I live in an apartment in New York even if I had access to the ground and room to grow an orange tree the climate is wrong. You might be able to grow your own oranges but can you make your own clothes, build your own furniture, manufacture your own car, fab your own chips, or drill your own oil? We have been codependent since whenever your ancestor stopped being subsistence farmers. This could be centuries ago if you come from an old money family, or weeks ago if you a recent immigrant from the poor rural China or India.

Next it sounds like the growers are actively working on fixing the problem of a plague killing their oranges. Do you think they should be working faster or just that their isn't a problem in the first place? In the end I don't really understand your comment.

And why is the spread of a disease due to the "incompetence" of the growers? If you get the cold, do you say, "I was incompetent at washing my hands?"

Way to miss the point of the article, it's about the future of oranges not the future of any orange grower. If you live in one of the few places in the world than can grow an orange you will soon find the very same disease affecting your precious personal orange supply.