We
have shown green plants prefer soil carbon
sourcing. This points the way to the genetic engineering of green plants that
will use 1/25th the
water of today’s plants!
We need only to find the genetic codes sizing and placing stomata,
substitute them with those of cactus or bromeliad stomata DNA code segments to reduce
irrigation to that of fields of cacti as long as we feed the plants subsoil CO2.
Genetic
engineering is possible because we
are all from
the same source. There must have been one original cell from
which all living matter came. As a result finding a genetic code
that causes a codfish
to make a natural non-toxic anti-freeze meant that code
could be put into tomatoes and produce a more substantial and
economically viable product that could be left on the vine longer, into
the first freezes. The market was killed for this product with
ignorant
fear fueled by reckless journalists. The enemy to progress
is more often what people don't know rather than what they do know.
However, this defines for authors of new technology and invention
the task of educating the consumers. Given our era of panic
power politics, propaganda and news management our work is clearly defined and
monumental.
The opposition to modified plants
is ignorance run amok. The kinds of experiments we do on plants
happen continually in nature. We are part of
nature. We are the part with brains, opposable
digits and language so we can manipulate, communicate across time with documents,
have a long enough life span that we can learn and even better,
transmit what we have learned to subsequent generations.
The enormous advantage that we
have over plants is that we live for long times and extend our lives
intellectually by documenting our work and passing it on to new
generations. With plants it is all over in one season. For
thousands of years we have done genetic engineering with a single tool:
selection. The native farmers of ancient Mexico not only
discovered the improvement carbon made in their soil, but routinely
picked the plants more to their liking to use for seed.
With a new generation every year,
and thousands of years, we can understand how modern corn came from a
grass. Go to any international airport and see how many kinds of
arms, legs, torsos, heads and hairs you see. Mother nature never
quits experimenting. By nothing more complicated than selection
we have come from the "Lucy" of the Leakeys to blond Scandanavians,
Eskimos, Negroes and more now divided into five official races.
As surely as the sun rises every
morning we will develop plants that have the stomata of cacti and use
small amounts of water. These plants will produce our
food, fiber and fuel in greater abundance than ever with ony 4% of the
water
used by today's plants. They will depend on us and our machines,
but
they will live, survive and thrive as we seek our combined destiny.
The world is changing.
