A couple of months ago my eyes were drawn to a New York Times article, “A Race to Save the Orange by Altering its DNA” by Amy Harmon. Altering the orange’s DNA? Whoa! And why?
An air-borne insect is transmitting a disease that sours Florida’s oranges and turns them half green. Grove owners have tried everything to stop the infestation—cutting and burning trees and pesticide spraying—to no avail. One grove, the supplier of oranges for Tropicana and Florida’s Natural juices, lost about a quarter of its 700 thousand contaminated trees. Scientists from all over the world have tried to solve the Citrus Greening disease with no success.
Instead, they concluded that the only possible solution is to alter the orange’s DNA with a gene from a different species to produce a genetically modified orange. But would the consumer eat a modified orange? Maybe yes; maybe no, although tomatoes are a perfect example of a genetically modified food. For now work is progressing in laboratories on grafting a spinach gene to a healthy tree with some success. If this means works it will take about a decade to restore the industry to full productivity.
The freezes of the 1890s obliterated the citrus trees of Lake County and plunged the entire central Florida area into a severe economic depression. Ninety years later a series of freezes shut down most of the area’s groves forever. Imagine the loss of the world’s second largest orange producer—all because of an indestructible virus-carrying insect. It adds up to an unthinkable 76 thousand jobs and a loss of $9 billion dollars to the State’s economy.
Read more about this at: http://tinyurl.com/mg9yob5
The Chetwynd Chronicles 
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