It is understood that papaya is one of the genetically modified foods that consumers are now really exposed to, and the vast majority of papayas on the market are genetically modified varieties.
Chinese Agricultural University School of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering experts said, ring spot virus for papaya is a devastating disaster, almost always have to use genetic modification technology to fight this virus, so that the papaya to produce resistance. So papaya is basically no harvest if it is not genetically modified. Since genetically modified papayas are commonly grown around the world, it doesn't matter if they are labeled or not.
Experts suggested that the management of genetically modified foods should be regulated by amending the Food Safety Law. Consideration could be given to utilizing the mechanism of the Food Safety Risk Assessment Committee to conduct risk assessment on the safety of genetically modified food. Once it is concluded that certain genetically modified food is unsafe, corresponding measures should be taken immediately to ensure that the production and operation of the genetically modified food stops and consumers are informed to stop consuming it.
Popularization of GM knowledge
Currently on the market are not GM foods such as cherry tomatoes, colorful peppers, small pumpkins and cucumbers
A list of genetically modified foods has been circulating on the Internet, including "cherry tomatoes, large colorful peppers, small pumpkins and cucumbers," which is not recognized by experts.
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Biological Institute researcher Wang Zhixing said, small tomatoes, also known as cherry tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomato varieties since ancient times, just because of the small size, picking inconvenience, low yield, the earliest only as an ornamental, and later found that easy to consume, the taste has been improved and gradually popular. The small size is an inherent genetic difference, not the result of genetic modification.
Wu Gang, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Oilseeds Institute, said the Virgin fruit is closer to the wild state before artificial domestication, in fact, wild chestnuts, walnuts, apples, etc. are also much smaller than conventional cultivars. Human domestication of wild plants is generally to improve yield, the main practice is to increase the size of the fruit, but with the diversification of people's food requirements, the emergence of a lot of miniaturized fruits and vegetables, such as early spring red jade watermelon and so on. These miniaturized varieties are derived from germplasm resources carrying the original genes of their ancestors and have nothing to do with genetic modification.
Wu Gang said small pumpkins and cucumbers are also not genetically modified foods, merely under-ripe pumpkins and cucumbers. If they continue to be grown in the field, the small pumpkins and cucumbers will eventually grow into regular large pumpkins and old cucumbers.
About the large colored peppers, Wu Gang said the large colored peppers contain different types of anthocyanins that show up as richer colors. Variations of anthocyanins are common in plants, like flowers have different colors in the same variety, and radishes have red radish, green radish and white radish. "China once approved the commercial cultivation of virus-resistant bell peppers, but the GM bell peppers did not have any obvious advantage over conventional ones, so they were naturally eliminated from the market."
Wu Gang said that in some varieties, the color produced by the mutation even replaced the wild color and became the mainstream of cultivated varieties, such as the original carrots are mostly purple, and the most common orange carrots are now selected by Dutch breeders based on the colors of the Dutch flag. Therefore, the fruits and vegetables currently on sale in the market, its color has nothing to do with genetic modification.
Wang Zhixing explained, cotton, peppers, corn, rice, etc. have different colors, is the natural existence of genetic differences, not the result of genetic modification. For example, colored cotton from ancient times, but because of the color cotton fiber short, poor strength, in the past, rarely planted, and now because of the non-dyeing to attract some consumers, farmers began to plant. Colored peppers are also naturally occurring, just not planted on a large scale in the past, ordinary consumers rarely see.
Wu Gang said, the above these fruits and vegetables are conventional breeding means very easy to do, with genetic modification instead is not economic practice. "Conventional breeding is mainly through selection to obtain new varieties with new traits. A very important job here is 'selection'. Naturally occurring genetic variation often happens randomly as well." Wu Gang explains, "Regardless of size or color, natural mutants can be found in nature. Breeders do the work of simply finding these mutants and aggregating them with other good traits into varieties."