In it's never ending struggle to make the world a safer place it seems the Environmental Protection Agency delivered a dumbfounding ruling, one which might have saved billions of dollars of damage to citrus plants following the recent freeze in California.
It seems, at least according to the former head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology Henry I. Miller, that a simple gene alteration in a naturally occurring bacterium already in the fruit might limit the damage from a freeze. Because the bacterium contain a protein that promotes frost damage, removing the gene might, thus limiting or prevent frost damage, could result. But scientists were never allowed to test for it. They considered the original bacterium a pest so the altered bacterium became a pesticide.
For more information on the ice-minus issue, please click here.
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