Sharon Schmickle, award-winning MinnPost writer
Think about it. The food markets are the most inviting scenes in almost every city and village. Here you find artistry in pyramids of juicy red tomatoes, baskets of dried beans and bunches of green-to-yellow bananas. Even the ugliest of displays — cassava, potatoes and other root crops — are pleasing in their promise of starchy comfort food.
Now think again. What makes one tomato red, one banana so very sweet and one pepper capable of setting fire to your mouth?
The answer is genes. Another way to think about the food market is to see it as a display in Nature’s genetic abundance. Seen that way, the market also offers cutting-edge news stories, forward-looking policy options and new consumer choices.
Exploring the new biosciences is easier than you may think.
There is no shortage of raw material. Tens of thousands of genes are at work in your own body — directing growth, internal functions and the characteristics you will pass to your children. The same is true for all animals and plants.
Even though we live in a world that is utterly dependent on genetic function, we’ve only begun to understand genes in the past few decades.
Too many journalists and policymakers have failed to share in that understanding. Instead, they have left these important issues to be explained by scientists who often speak a language the public cannot understand. As a non-scientist, you can and should learn enough to question the experts and explain their genetic research to others.
Nowhere on earth are genetic stories more profound than in Africa. Genes — not diamonds, gold or rubber – are the most precious natural resource that Africa has shared with the world.
Now, the new biosciences are driving change across Africa.
On this site, we will help you explore this new frontier by focusing on the plants that feed millions of people.
The stories unfolding as a result speak to urgent needs, explaining how crops can stand up to drought and disease. They are economic stories, explaining how a village, a nation or a region can feed itself with something left over to sell. They are political stories, explaining how policy choices determine whether children in the villages eat or go to bed hungry. They are the stories of genetic treasures hidden in local seed banks and of epic battles with crop-destroying pests.
More fundamentally, they can be crafted to interest anyone who cooks, buys, grows, sells or eats food – explaining the qualities that make one type of wheat more suitable for bread than for pasta, one yam so tempting for slicing and frying and one breed of rice just the right bed for a garlicky stew.
Above all, they can help advance a day when everyone will have enough to eat.
This site offers a gateway into these stories. Explore it, and you will find background briefings on the genetics of some common crops, explanations of scientific terms and concepts and a few story examples intended to inspire others.