biotechnology in your shopping cart
biotechnology in your shopping cart
Table grapes without seeds, smaller melons, tastier soles or olives easier to pick up. These are some of the applications of the biotechnology projects of the Genoma Foundation that are already present in the shopping cart.
"Since the human being dominates the world, has tried to domesticate plants and animals for their benefit and, with it, has starred in such a process of genetic improvement that the food we know today have nothing to do with the primitives," says its director , Fernando Garcés, who emphasizes that the Genome Foundation focuses its research on those aspects of food that arouse greater interest among the producers themselves.
Thus, for example, the sole study, called Pleurogene, has allowed to sequence its genetic map and select the "liveliest and strongest" fingerlings to reduce malformations and control the cultivation of the species in captivity. As a result, Spain could soon lead the production of this fish in the world. Among the following candidates to be studied are hake, octopus, cuttlefish or cuttlefish.
For its part, olive oil and table olives are the protagonists of the Oligen project, launched this year, which studies how to make the fruit fall more easily or that the tree can grow in the form of a hedge to improve mechanized harvesting. .
Another project of the foundation is GrapeGen, a study on table grapes that has identified the genes and proteins associated with vine quality traits. The study of 600 grape varieties has concluded that "crossing very few varieties we can obtain new ones that if they manage to be crispy, without seeds or with antioxidants will allow modifying the market and forcing other companies to pay royalties".
On the other hand, the Genome Foundation has also announced that next year it will convene a contest to develop research on how to obtain energy from algae or enzymes.