this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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For those of you wondering how this is useful, tobacco is often used as a model organism in botany. The utility of this technique is less obvious in tobacco but more obvious in fruits, vegetables, etc. think seedless grapes, etc
Seedless grapes already exist, but I suppose you could now insert the gene into other plants/varieties to make those seedless as well.
I'm thinking more about how big ag companies could use this to prevent farmers from saving seeds/propagating a copyrighted variety (though I don't know if that's common with any crops where the seed itself isn't the end product) or maybe more charitably, preventing their copyrighted plants from cross pollinating neighboring fields of the same species (e.g. ruining that neighbor's non-gmo status).
Finally, this could be useful if it can be "switched on" i.e. by deliberately polluting an invasive plant's gene pool with this gene and then switching it on to stall the invasive's population growth. But I think most invasives are perennials, so would still need to be removed some other way.
It could be used for improving products, but really it'll be DRM for plants. That's what could make money so that's why money was spent.
Thought this too. About to read the article; half-wondering whether I’ll see the likes of Monsanto or similar in amongst the study sponsors.