Category: GMO crops

Last weekend, Jo Robinson’s opinion piece on plant breeding got a coveted centerpiece spot in the Sunday Review, complete with a provocative headline - “Breeding the Nutrition out of our Food” and an explosive sub-heat – “corn is one of the many plants we’ve ruined.”

This sounds dire. But it turns out there’s no need to regret that sweet corn you might have enjoyed at a holiday cookout last weekend. It won’t kill you – though it may be more fattening and less nutrient-rich than corn of yore.

While the overall piece was unconvincing in its thesis that agriculture "ruined" food, it did contain some fascinating bits of history. For example, readers learned that today’s supersweet corn was the accidental result of radiation experiments done to learn about plant...