(ANSA) – Trieste, February 22 – Technologies applied to DNA and RNA are useful for improving food quality, as is already happening for tomatoes and wheat. This is what Perdomeneco Perata, Professor of Plant Physiology at Sant’Anna High School, explained today, speaking at the workshop on the challenges of feeding the planet in a sustainable way, organized by the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, OGS and the Trieste International Foundation FIT, ongoing at the ICTP Abdel Peace for theoretical physics.
“Science should be trusted, even in the field of technologies applied to food,” Prata emphasized.
“As for the technologies applied to DNA, we are talking about a slight but fundamental modification, different from genomics, that allows and will allow to obtain improved plants. It has been modified but nothing extraneous has been added ‘select the world’ and we already have a product on the market, a tomato It contains higher levels of GABA, sold in Japan, and is a substance used as a dietary supplement.” The other technology, RNA, is applied instead, for example, “to wheat, to eliminate the production of acrylamide. Like all foods, wheat also contains beneficial substances but also not-so-good substances. In this case, something is removed, but Always with the same goal: to have healthy foods.
There is a trust problem, notes the researcher: “The end consumer is wary and sometimes afraid of agricultural technologies. When we are offered a technological innovation, a new phone, we absolutely want it. In this case, the innovation is appreciated, while the tomato probably scares off. This is understandable, but We must remember that we are heading towards population growth, with climate change, an aspect that will make farming increasingly difficult. We will find ourselves facing a food emergency, and at this point, personal beliefs on that front are likely to change.” (handle).
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