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Jul 12, 2016

Technology Quarterly: The future of agriculture

The Economist recently published its Technology Quarterly in which they focused on the new technologies being applied to food production. AquaBounty gets mention in the section on Fish Farming.

Gone fishin’

Fish farmers used to dream of fitting their charges with transgenes to make them grow more quickly. Indeed, over the past couple of decades researchers have treated more than 35 fish species in this way. They have often been spectacularly successful. Only one firm, though, has persisted to the point of regulatory approval. AquaBounty’s transgenic Atlantic salmon, now cleared in both America and Canada, has the desirable property of rapid growth. Its transgene, taken from a chinook salmon, causes it to put on weight all year round, not just in spring and summer. That halves the time the fish will take to reach marketable size. Read article here.