Gene editing can speed up plant domestication, taming wild vines, bushes and grasses and turning them into new crops.

The crops we rely on today have been bred over thousands of years to enhance certain characteristics. For example, sweetcorn started life as a wild grass called teosinte.

When Boris Johnson became prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2019, he pledged to “liberate the U.K.’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti–genetic modification rules.

Powdery mildew certainly sounds unappealing, but for wheat farmers the fungus can mean a serious hit to the pocketbook. It infects crops, yellowing leaves and stunting growth. In countries where the blight is common, like China, the microbe can destroy up to 40% of a field, making it one of the most damaging and costly pathogens for wheat farmers.