Anti-GMO Activists Slow Scientists Breeding a CO2-Reducing Superplant (thebulletin.org)

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls it "a plant that could save civilization, if we let it." Slashdot reader meckdevil writes: A "super chickpea plant" now in development could remove huge amounts of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and fix it in the soil, greatly diminishing the impacts of climate change (not to mention producing large amounts of tasty hummus). But fear of anti-GMO activists has so far deterred her from using the CRISPR gene-editing tool to speed work on the plant.
The effort is led by Joanne Chory, director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences -- who according to the article will make much slower progress without CRISPR. "Even with advanced breeding techniques, Chory estimates that developing a super plant in this fashion would take around 10 years..."

"She estimates that if 5 percent of the world's cropland, approximately the total area of Egypt, were devoted to such super plants, they could capture about 50 percent of current global carbon dioxide emissions."

Comments

What happens to the carbon?

[Tyrannosaur]

In true slashdot fashion, I comment before reading the article.

If the carbon gets fixed into the soil, how does that change the soil chemistry? It is something that can be done for a couple of years, and then the soil is saturated and can't support life any more? Does it deep down with the water and poison the ground water? I hope that it would be something that could be useful, and not an egypt-sized carbon landfill.

because this could never go wrong. :p

[Anonymous Coward]

- release super CO2 sucking plant into wild.
- said plant mutates and grows like crazy.
- too much CO2 removed... now we have a different problem...