That technology was genetic modification, which was first invented in the mid-1980s as a kinder, gentler alternative to ‘mutation breeding’ using gamma rays and carcinogenic chemicals. Did you know that this was the way many crops were produced over the last half-century? That much pasta comes from an irradiated variety of durum wheat? That most Asian pears are grown on irradiated grafts? Or that Golden Promise, a variety of barley especially popular with organic brewers, was first created in an atomic reactor in Britain in the 1950s by massive mutation of its genes followed by selection?
