Monsanto

The last guest speaker for the semester was David Mayonado, a technology development representative from Monsanto. He explained how important it is to keep developing new ways to improve the efficiency of growing food for our growing population. His company uses many revolutionary products such as GMOs. GMOs are genetically modified organisms. They are used to increase yield, better control of weeds, decrease the amount of pesticides applied to crops and improve soil quality. As time goes on the efficiency of growing food continues to increase. Besides GMOs the newest thing is called RNAi. RNA interference silences certain genes so that certain proteins are not produced and when pests such as rootworms eat it, it acts as a virus turns off genes needed to move proteins around in worm and it kills the worm. This is being developed in corn, potato and tomato plants for their respective pests.

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