Before Xu Chengliang and Yan Yan were about to leave, Lu Yu told them that if they needed any security equipment, they would directly make a list to Liu Shichang and let him be responsible for procurement.

Lu Yu didn't know much about this aspect, and said that as long as they felt the need, as long as they were allowed to use it, they didn't have to worry about the price.

After all, if you are well equipped, you can not only protect them, but also indirectly protect yourself.

Xu Chengliang nodded and said that he would have to go back and check in detail before finalizing the list.

They had been in the army before and did not know much about civilian equipment.

Lu Yu can understand, when it comes to the military, the two of them will definitely be able to say the Tao.

After a few more idle words, the two rushed to the resettlement office, and in their words, everything should be done efficiently.

Typical troop style.

……

Lu Yu stayed in the extra-river nebula and had nothing to do, and went upstairs to Yunhan Technology.

Chatting with Ge Yuncong about technical topics and talking about programming ideas with some programming apes, time flies quickly.

When I got home and finished running, I washed up and rested.

The next day, I went to the library to read a book.

As Lu Yu has read more books recently, he has more knowledge of botany and biology, and he has a better understanding of transgenic technology.

On the Blue Star, as early as more than 30 years ago, it successfully transferred foreign genes into plants for the first time.

Since then, genetically modified crops have given humanity new hope for a second green revolution.

Many people hope that genetically modified crops can greatly increase food production, thereby providing a large amount of energy and fiber, and solving the global food crisis.

Increase farmers' incomes while reducing environmental pollution and creating a greener world.

……

Just hope is wonderful.

After years of development, until around 2012, there were only a few successful genetically modified crops in the market.

It is also a crop product that carries genes for insect resistance and herbicide resistance.

At that time, because of the launch of these crop products, it also caused great controversy and speculation around the world.

Many people are worried that genetically modified crops will have an adverse impact on the original ecological environment, and they are worried about the food safety of genetically modified crops.

In fact, these fears are not all unfounded.

……

All of this starts with a company called Monsanto in the lighthouse country.

Monsanto is a multinational agricultural company founded in 1901.

Monsanto really got its start during the war between the Lighthouse Nation and South Vietnam.

At that time, in order to eliminate the guerrillas hiding in the jungle, the army of the Lighthouse State used a large number of Agent Orange produced by Monsanto, which was named after the orange color of the keg containing it.

Agent Orange contains a chemical toxin commonly known as "dioxin", which is very harmful to the human body and the environment.

The land is devoid of grass, and those who survive will grow deformed.

Between 1962 and 1970, Lighthouse State forces sprayed nearly 72 million litres of the herbicide in South Vietnam.

As a result, a large number of babies born with deformities were born in the areas where Agent Orange was sprayed after the war, regardless of the number of people who died as a direct result.

This was followed by the development of glyphosate, a powerful herbicide, in 1970 and its introduction to the market in 1974.

Glyphosate, a herbicide that was later widely used worldwide, was classified as a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization's Cancer Research Agency in 2015.

Of course, this may also be the work of another company, but it is true that the herbicide glyphosate is harmful.

The other company is the Prussian company Bayer, many people may not have heard of it, but this company must know about the production of aspirin, and also created the sea and heroin.

Its four pillars, namely polymers, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, chemicals and agriculture, achieved revenue of 46.769 billion euros in 2016.

In September 2016, the company announced that it had reached an agreement with Monsanto for USD 63 billion.

……

And that's not all, after the Vietnam War, Monsanto became the world's largest high-tech criminal with huge destructive power.

That is, through genetically modified seeds, to control the food production of various countries, so that more countries and nations can endure invisible wars.

Monsanto uses the original genetically modified technology, Agrobacterium and gene gun, to transfer toxic microbial virus genes into crops, or insert foreign genes that have nothing to do with the original crops.

Years later, through scientific research and production practices, countries around the world finally determined that Monsanto's genetically modified seeds were neither productive nor safe, and destroyed resources.

Since then, many countries have only begun to enact legislation to ban all or part of Monsanto's genetically modified crops.

It is only in recent years, with the advancement of genetically modified technology, that some policies have been gradually relaxed.

……

Since 1980, Monsanto has set up representative offices in the domestic capital, Modu, Yangcheng, Xiangjiang and other places.

As in many countries, it has established contacts with the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Agriculture and other institutions to gradually make genetically modified seeds enter the country unimpeded.

Among the few successful ones on the market mentioned earlier, there are genetically modified soybeans launched by Monsanto.

In 2001, China joined the WTO, and since then it has begun to import genetically modified soybeans produced in lighthouse countries on a large scale.

Since 2003, China has imported genetically modified soybeans for 13 consecutive years, including 52.34 million tons in 2010 and 95.53 million tons in 2016.

China has gradually become the world's largest importer of soybeans from the former soybean exporter, and the direct impact is that the soybean planting area is decreasing year by year.

70% to 80% of the soybeans consumed in China are imported genetically modified soybeans, and most of them flow into edible oil processing enterprises with foreign background.

The price of its products is lower than that of traditional soybean edible oil processing enterprises in China, and the low price soon occupied most of the market, 85% of which is controlled by the four major foreign grain merchants.

The efficiency of domestic local oil enterprises has declined sharply, and their operations are in trouble.

……

The four major international grain merchants, ABCD, ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, as the introduction of foreign capital, enjoy preferential policies, and in the early years invested in the establishment of imported soybean as raw materials in the domestic crushing and processing enterprises.

In order to survive, domestic oil enterprises have also begun to get involved in the field of oil extraction that is enough to import soybeans as raw materials, and all kinds of crushing enterprises have blossomed everywhere.

Due to the expansion of processing capacity, soybean raw materials are suddenly tight.

In 2004, a number of domestic crushing companies decided to set up buying groups to buy soybeans in lighthouse countries in order to increase their bargaining power.

On the eve of the trip to the lighthouse country, the lighthouse country's Ministry of Agriculture announced that the annual soybean harvest was in arrears.

On the same day, the price of soybeans in the Beacon Nation futures market soared, from $220 per tonne to $391 per tonne.

Shortly after the domestic purchasing group signed a huge purchase contract, the Ministry of Agriculture of the lighthouse country came forward to clarify that new data showed that soybean production would increase significantly.

Soybeans fell quickly in the futures market, plummeting to $266.

After being swept a handful of wool, domestic enterprises suffered heavy losses, and some enterprises had to enter bankruptcy procedures.

……

The four major grain merchants took the opportunity to "send charcoal in the snow" to let the domestic crushing enterprises on the verge of bankruptcy continue to operate, on the condition that they transfer their equity.

As a result, the four major grain merchants took the opportunity to acquire and control a large number of domestic crushing and processing enterprises to complete the layout of the domestic soybean processing industry.

Among the 97 large-scale oil processing enterprises in the country, 64 are controlled by foreign capital, accounting for 80% of the processing capacity of domestic imported soybeans.

After laying out all aspects of the raw materials, processing and market of the domestic soybean industry chain, the international soybean futures market has once again made waves.

Affected by this, the domestic soybean futures price rose from 2,600 yuan at the beginning of the year to 4,100 yuan at the end of the year in 2007.

In 2008, with the world food crisis, it continued to soar, reaching a maximum of 5,240 yuan in July.

In just 18 months, the price has doubled.

This is not generated by demand, but by market monopolies.

The fluctuation of international food prices has caused many small countries to suffer and even fall into turmoil.

Because it is the world's largest importer of soybeans, the price surge has cost the country tens of billions of dollars.

……

This is the tip of the iceberg of the food war triggered by the genetically modified soybeans introduced by Monsanto in 1995.

Not to mention the genetically modified corn that was introduced later.

There is a saying: whoever masters the grain of the country will master the country.

It's a bit biased, but it makes some sense.

Therefore, for many years, domestic officials have repeatedly emphasized food security and introduced a number of policies.

Looking at this information that he had not been exposed to before, Lu Yu felt that Deng Qiang should be allowed to go overseas to gather wool.

Launch two limited editions, grab the hard work!

……

A little further afield, let's talk about GMO technology.

Although Monsanto has done many evils, it has also made genetically modified technology enter the field of vision of many research institutions and carry out research.

The original genetically modified technology used by Monsanto was the Agrobacterium method and the gene gun method.

It's just that they have transferred toxic microbial virus genes into crops, or inserted foreign genes that have nothing to do with the original crops.

Instead of using technology for the right thing, it for evil.

As more research institutes joined in, crop products carrying genes for insect resistance and herbicide resistance were gradually developed, which are now widely cultivated.

Although the ideal vision has not been achieved, the development of crops rich in supernutrients, greatly increasing food production and solving the problem of food shortage.

But it is also helpful for agriculture because it has characteristics such as insect resistance, which also increases yields to a certain extent and reduces the use of pesticides.

……

As research continued, a new generation of genetically modified crops was introduced, such as apples and golden rice, which do not change color, and golden bananas, which are rich in many nutrients.

This generation of technology is crop gene editing technology.

In the past, transgenic technology was to transfer foreign genes into the genome of plants, so as to produce new characteristics.

The new generation of gene editing technology is to realize the knockout and addition of gene fragments, and rewrite the genetic code according to people's wishes.

The original gene editing technology could only be achieved through physical and chemical mutagenesis, homologous recombination, etc.

These methods either have random editing positions, or require a lot of manpower and material resources to operate, which has the disadvantages of high cost and long cycle.

It wasn't until the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 technology that these challenges were solved.

How do you explain this technology?

CRISPR is a string of gene sequences in bacteria, and the entire CRISPR system includes a series of proteins related to their functions.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a very ingenious technique.

The RNA in the CRISPR system is used to guide the Cas protein to cleave the target DNA.

It is equivalent to destroying one's own genes and achieving the purpose of gene knockout.

This technique is very easy to use, on the one hand, it saves time, on the other hand, it has high precision, and only two segments of gene sequences need to be introduced into the cell to achieve the purpose of gene knockout.

It is said that it is gene editing technology, but in fact, there is still a way to go N light years away from the random editing of genes that most people understand.

A more accurate description would be genetic manipulation techniques.

It's nowhere near the same as editing genes like text.

……