I May Need a Dictionary - GMO vs GEO

It's all in a name, like William Shakespeare said. But sometimes those words have no meaning if you don't understand them! How did it all get so confusing?

Family, Genus, Species - Genetically Engineered, Genetically Modified - Hybrid, Heirloom - ????

Ironically, the sometimes difficult Latin names were a solution to fix the confusion of common names. Just think of all the plants we call Daisy: Shasta Daisy, Asters, Gerbera, English Daisy, Rudbeckia (the Black-Eyed Susan) - it's very confusing.

In the early 18th Century a Swedish botanist, Carl Linnaeus, worked up a classifying system  to put all plants (ALL plants - boy, did he have big dreams!) into separate "boxes" (my wording, not his) so, for example, we can identify a plant without any leaves or fruit as a cherry tree and not a maple. Or when we want to plant  a spruce that will grow on a hill above the ocean (Picea sitchensis - Sitka Spruce) and not a tree for a high mountain ridge (Picea engelmannii - Engelmann Spruce). Knowing the correct name will ensure success.


So, wouldn't you know, once the names got straightened out, folks just had to start inventing new words. In our great-grandparents day, plants were open-pollinated - the insects did all the work and the fruit and flowers  yielded seeds that resembled the "parent" plant, for the most part. Squashes can get a little kinky when they're allowed to freely cross-pollinate and you may be very surprised by the resulting squash. But our Heirloom plants are the open-pollinated kind and you can save the seeds for future planting.

About 60 years ago, horticulture took a turn away from Heirloom varieties and starting hybridizing plants on large scale to guarantee the desirable qualities growers wanted: flower color, disease resistance, plant vigor, etc. The hybrids were a result of careful breeding, like AKC dogs - generation after generation, plants had their pollination manipulated so the best plants were the result.  This is why some hybrids (the Wave Petunias, for example) have a higher price tag. Growing hybrids requires patience and diligent  record keeping.

This modern manipulation of a natural process can also be called Genetic Modification, resulting in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). Seedless watermelons are a good example of a GMO. The process should not be confused with Genetic Engineering which happens in a laboratory with plant genes.

Vegetables have been bred to resist Verticillium and Fusarium Wilts for years and many homeowners have grown the modified plants with great success. Agriculture is a huge business in the modern world and no farmer dares to fall behind the newest technology. It's understandable that when Genetic Engineering promised crops that would resist insects or disease, increasing yield, it became popular. Herbicide resistant crops meant farmers could spray the competing weeds without harming their crop, again increasing yield.

But Nature is a relentless foe and, like modern antibiotics, the weeds surrounding the glyphosate resistant plants are learning how to be herbicide resistant also. No matter what your position is, genetic engineering is in our future and I think we all need to become educated to all its aspects.

If you'd like to read more, I found these educational sites to be very informative:
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-technology/faq-genetically-modified-food/en/
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetically-modified-organisms-gmos-transgenic-crops-and-732