Professor Birger Lindberg Møller from Center for Synthetic Biology, Denmark, has always been impressed with the plant world and how plants can act as sun driven biochemical factories which can generate all the substances needed for growth and development of the plant. Plants can defend themselves with poison, they can signalise to each other and protect themselves against being eaten.

Humans have domesticated plants for thousands of years. With genetic engineering plants can be developed to produce a large amount of different substances from medicine to food and they can protect themselves better against environmental changes and diseases.

But the GMO approach has been controversial since the first GMO plants were launched in the 1990ies. Now Birger Lindberg Møller has another solution. Why not let the plants make their own natural mutations and select those which have the right genetic traits? It is possible to plant thousands of plants and select the very best with modern PCR screening.

Photo credit: Jens Degett, © Science Stories ApS.