{"id":116232,"date":"2020-11-23T09:23:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/crispr-edited-bananas-immune-to-killer-pathogens-advance-toward-commercialization-in-africa"},"modified":"2020-11-23T09:23:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:23:22","slug":"crispr-edited-bananas-immune-to-killer-pathogens-advance-toward-commercialization-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/crispr-edited-bananas-immune-to-killer-pathogens-advance-toward-commercialization-in-africa","title":{"rendered":"CRISPR-edited bananas immune to killer pathogens advance toward commercialization in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/crispr-edited-bananas-immune-to-killer-pathogens-advance-toward-commercialization-in-africa.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For more than two decades, I have been working to improve several staple food crops in Africa, including bananas, plantains, cassavas and yams. As principal scientist and a plant biotechnologist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Nairobi, I aim to develop varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases such as bacterial wilt, Fusarium wilt (caused by the fungus F. oxysporum) and banana streak virus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[Editor\u2019s note: Abdullahi Tsanni is a freelance science journalist based in Abuja, Nigeria.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 2011, my team and I created a set of tools, the only one of its kind in Africa, for changing DNA sequences so that we could develop genetically modified and genome-edited products in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, we pioneered the first application of CRISPR gene-editing technology to deactivate banana streak virus in plantains. This technology overcame a major hurdle in banana breeding on the continent, and is the first reported successful use of genome editing to improve bananas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For more than two decades, I have been working to improve several staple food crops in Africa, including bananas, plantains, cassavas and yams. As principal scientist and a plant biotechnologist at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Nairobi, I aim to develop varieties that are resistant to pests and diseases such as bacterial wilt, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}