Here are some apples that don't turn brown because the gene that codes for polyphenoloxydase has been supressed. That means they look fresher and appetizing longer, and self-digest slower than normal apples. I wonder if you'd get a different color cider from these...
"But are they apples now?" Well, yes, given that apples today are nothing like those once found in the wild.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/health/apples-genetically-modified-on-sale-soon/index.html
And then there's the era of Atomic Gardening, when we developed dozens of new varieties by speeding up the natural mutation rate with radiation. If you fire a shotgun blast of beta rays and gamma rays at some seeds and collect the desirable mutations, that's the exact same process that occurs in nature, just faster.
The irony is some of those same strains are still being grown today, some even legitimately marked as non-GMO and organic.
@8zu Yeah, it's sad that genetic engineering has become limited to giant evil corporations that ruffle left-wing feathers. There used to be goverment-sponsored projects as non-profit national laboratories - Atomic Gardening was about food independence post-WWII.
But it's getting cheaper and more accessible; there are startups working on animal-less meat, cow-less cheese and other advances that would disrupt several environmentally-destructive and cruel agri-industries.
@gdorn So what would you get if you changed a #tea cultivar’s #genome so as to suppress polyphenol oxidase? http://babelcarp.org/babelcarp/babelcarp.cgi?phrase=Duo1+Fen1+Yang3+Hua4+Mei2
Presumably it wouldn’t just be cosmetic as with apples: you’d get tea leaves that you could manufacture green tea from, but not, e.g., black tea. Could you make matcha from it that wouldn’t deteriorate steeply as soon as you broke the vacuum seal?
If you love tea and say you don’t care, I doubt your sanity.
@babelcarp It turns out there are some age-old processes for preventing oxidation in green tea leaves, but since they usually involve heat to break down the oxidase, they subtly change the flavor of the tea.
So with a quick GMO snip you could get perfectly evergreen matcha as fresh as it was when it came off the tree? Sign me up.
@gdorn Age-old processes indeed: http://babelcarp.org/babelcarp/babelcarp.cgi?phrase=shaqing
I have to say, though, that to assume heat “subtly chang[ing] the flavor of the tea” is a bug, not a feature, would be … premature.
@babelcarp Haha, yeah, I read more of the link you posted after I replied. "Age-old" indeed.
But I was also looking at some other sources suggesting that microwaves are used by some producers and freeze-drying might also work, and the latter might be a good fit for leaves destined to become matcha anyway...
But then, in the opposite direction on the processing spectrum, lapsang souchong and pu-erh tuocha are a couple of my favorites...
George Dorn
8zu🔺Relocated→.social
Lew Perin