(Israel21C) Even though organic agriculture and sustainable farming practices are on the rise, feeding a hungry world demands that commercial farmers rely on genetically engineered (GMO) seeds to boost production and fend off diseases.
But environmentalists fear that GMO crops are a sort of Frankenstein with unknown future consequences. The Israeli company Morflora now has an alternative seed treatment in the works that is so revolutionary it is short-listed for Best Novel Agricultural Biotechnology in the 2012 international AGROW awards, and recently won a Red Herring business award in the Top 100 Europe category.
The trademarked product, TraitUP, will be on the market in 2013.
"Our technology is an innovative trait delivery platform. We can deliver any genetic trait to any seed, and the delivered gene does not transform the genome of the treated plant," Dotan Peleg, CEO of Morflora, said.