foods and vegetables that are being studied for gene editing

Why Gene Editing Is the Next Food Revolution

A new technique has the potential to change the foods we eat every day, boosting flavor, disease resistance, and yields, and even tackling allergens like gluten—and scientists say they're working only with nature's own tools.

Photograph by Rebecca Hale, National Geographic

Tucked into a suburban Long Island neighborhood, a 12-acre plot may be growing the future.

Under a blistering July sun, Zachary Lippman bends over a row of foot-high plum tomato plants to reveal budding yellow flowers that will each produce a tomato and ripen over the summer. Out here, on the grounds of a former dairy farm, it has all the appearance of age-old tradition.

But inside a nearby lab, Lippman advanced the selective breeding process with a little nip and tuck of the plant’s own DNA, and now the “edited” plant is about to bear fruit in the field.

“There’s a long way to go, but what we have able to do in the last four or five years is

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