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Genetically Modified Rice Makes More Food, Less Greenhouse Gas
Applehu Akbar writes: A team of researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences has engineered a barley gene into rice, producing a variety that yields 50% more grain while producing 90% less of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. The new rice pulls off this trick by putting more of its energy into top growth. In countries which depend on rice as a staple, this would add up to a really large amount of increased rice and foregone methane.
Growth allocation gene modifications typically don't change any proteins actually inside of the plant so it should taste exactly the same. It just grows more of the same thing, not alters it to use an easier to produce molecule so there naturally is more but then it's chemically different (in most cases).
All the seeds that just any jerk can buy are all these heirloom seeds.
Given that the vast majority of seeds I see in catalogs are F1 hybrids, it's unlikely that your statement is even remotely true. Most of what is sold to home gardeners is the same varieties being sold to commercial growers. Most home garden catalog vendors are in turn purchasing their seed from the big boys that supply farmers - Northup King, Stokes, and so on.
There are a few - Territorial Seed and Johnny's Selected Seeds come to mind - that to some degree also actively work on developing their own seed stocks; but even with them, most of the seed is being purchased from a handful of huge companies.
The only places I see heirlooms dominating a company's listings is in catalogs from companies specializing in open-pollinated vegetables - Seeds of Change, Abundant Life, etc.
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