Agronomist urges farmers to be cautious after researchers in China developed gene-edited wheat that they say is impervious to powdery mildew, a disease caused by a fungus that attacks the plant and forms a white powdery spore on new tender growth then spreads out into other plant parts.
A team of experts at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences led by Gao Caixia used gene-editing methods to create the same protective mutation in six copies of the Mildew Locus O (MLO) genes in wheat.
