GeneticallyModified Foods vs. Genetically Engineered Food, the Delicious Difference.

 Hey  wait a minute,  Just hold on.

GMO's — or genetically modified organisms — refer to the plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology.

In general conversation, GMO's and GE foods are often used to refer to the same thing they are not.

There is actually a big difference between the two and as the battle against GE foods escalates, it's important to understand the difference. All those anti-GMO images we see would be better served by substituting "GE" for "GMO." here are definitions of both, courtesy of the home garden seed association.

It is modern Genetic Engineering that is the subject of much discussion. Genetic Engineering describes the high-tech methods used in recent decades to incorporate genes directly into an organism.

The only way scientists can transfer genes between organisms that are not sexually compatible is to use recombinant DNA techniques. The plants that result do not occur in nature; they are 'genetically engineered' by human intervention and manipulation.

Examples of GE crops currently grown by agribusiness include corn modified with a naturally occurring soil bacterium for protection from corn borer damage (Bt-corn), and herbicide-resistant ('Roundup Ready®') soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa. All of these are larger acreage, commercial crops. At the present time, home gardeners will not encounter any packets of GE seeds sold through home garden seed catalogues or garden centre seed racks.

 GMO (Genetically Modified Organism): Defined As An Organism Produced Through Any Type Of Genetic Modification, Whether By High-Tech Modern Genetic Engineering, OR Long Time Traditional Plant Breeding Methods.

Why are There no Seeds in Bananas?

The reason the bananas we eat don’t have seeds is that they are all sterile. A long time ago the Cavendish bananas first came into being when a tetraploid banana (that is a plant that has four copies of every chromosome instead of the normal two) mated with a normal diploid banana. The result, a banana with three copies of every chromosome couldn’t mate or produce seeds. One of the steps in making reproductive cells (the analog of human sperm and egg cells) is the even dividing of a plant’s chromosomes into two reproductive cells.* Normal diploid cells can easily divide into two cells (one copy of each chromosome in each cell), tetraploid plants can divide the same way (two copies of each chromosome in each cell). Hexaploid, three copies in each and so on. Odd numbers of chromosomes don’t work. The plants can’t successfully make the cells it needs to reproduce, if it can’t reproduce it can’t make seeds, and that is why bananas (or seedless watermelons) don’t have seeds.

Again, while you often hear the GE and GMO used interchangeably, they have vastly different meanings. Since the beginning of human history, genes have been manipulated empirically by plant breeders who monitor their effects on specific characteristics or traits of the organism to improve productivity, quality, or performance. When plant breeders, working with conventional or organically produced varieties, select for traits like uniformity or disease resistance in an open-pollinated variety or create a hybrid cross between two cultivars, they are making the same kind of selections which can also occur in nature; in other words, they are genetically modifying organisms and this is where the term GMO actually applies. GMO has of course, through nature, also happened among humans.~~~Al Alex-Alexander) D Girvan.