Fall is nipping at our noses - with crisp morning air, shorter days and that kind of warm, glowing light that seems to shine at just the right angle, giving even the deadest of potted plants a wonderfully beautiful brightness.
It also means that my all-time favorite apples (yes, I have a favorite apple - don't you?), the "explosively crisp" Honeycrisp, is available at my local natural foods markets. Seems as though these beauties are only around for a few weeks in the fall, and seeing as they are THE MOST DELICIOUS APPLE I will ever bite into, I don't mind paying $3.99 a pound for them. An outrageous price once you learn these are not organic. In fact, they shine with the glisten that can only be layers of wax and pesticide.
As Marc was heading off to work this morning, he refused my reluctant addition of a Honeycrisp to his brown bag lunch, as he already had some inferior Gala apples at work. Was I relieved! I mentioned that these apples were "invented" in Minnesota to which Marc keenly noted, "So, this is a genetically modified organism?". I wasn't so sure.
It's definitely a hybrid - produced from Macoun, Honeygold and Keepsake apples. But any food that isn't a heirloom is technically a hybrid ... does that make it a GMO? I needed to do some research.
According to Wikipedia (the resource for all information. or at least quickest access), a HYBRIDis:
Crosses between populations, breeds or cultivators within a single species. This is often used in plant and animal breeding. In plant and animal breeding, hybrids are commonly produced and selected because they have desirable characteristics not found or inconsistently present in the parent individuals or populations. This rearranging of the genetic material between populations or races is often called hybridization.
Mass agriculture popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield many folds. Often the handful of breeds of plants and animals hybridized originated in developed countries and were further hybridized with local verities, in the rest of the developing world, to create high yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases.
It all sounds well and good, but hybridization had led to great loss in genetic diversity and biodiversity as a whole. Hence the movement toward heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables.
GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM (on the other hand?) is:
An organism whose genetic material has been altered using the genetic engineering techniques generally known as recombinant DNA technology. With recombinant DNA technology, DNA molecules from different sources are combined in vitro into one molecule to create a new gene. This modified DNA is then transferred into an organism causing the expression of modified or novel traits.
Genetic Engineering today has become another serious and alarming cause of genetic pollution because artificially created and genetically engineered plants and animals in laboratories, which could never have evolved in nature even with conventional hybridization, can live and breed on their own and what is even more alarming, interbreed with naturally evolved wild varieties.
GM food is of concern for the future when diverse genetic material will cease to exist to be able to further improve or hybridize weakening food crops and livestock against more resistant diseases and climatic changes.
In summary - it seems as though natural hybridization is an OK thing, as it's cross-breeding two existing species and not genetically altering anything (which seems more permanent?). But genetically modifying food to our whims can lead to disastrous consequences.
So what of my beloved Honeycrisp apple? Seems to be that this is a child of scientific hybridization - not genetic modification ... so I'm safe for now.
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