34 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER13, 2021
costly: it’s estimated that it can reduce
the efficiency of photosynthesis by forty
per cent. Using genes from bacteria and
algae, the RIPE team has developed “by-
pass” tobacco plants, which break down
the toxic compound in fewer steps.
Long pointed to a muddy plot nearby.
Had I arrived a few weeks earlier, he
said, I would have found “bypass” po-
tatoes growing there. These had been
destroyed by heavy rains, and now it
was too late in the season to replant.
“It’s kind of been wrecked,” he said,
with a sigh.
From the fields, we drove to an enor-
mous greenhouse. Before entering it,
we had to put on lab coats and sterile
booties. Near the door were benches of
tobacco plants wrapped in cellophane.
The rest of the greenhouse was filled
with long rows of what looked like DVD
players. These turned out to be high-
tech scales connected to a precision ir-
rigation system. Plants could be placed
on the scales and given measured sips
of water; then they’d be automatically
weighed to see how much bulk they’d
put on. More than four hundred plants
could be tested at once, and the results
would quickly reveal which specimens
with which genetic changes were the
best performers. Someone f lipped a
switch, and a set of cameras mounted
on scaffolding began to creep over the
rows. The cameras, I was told, would
produce a continuous stream of data
about the plants, so that everything
down to the curve of their leaves could
be studied.
Since its founding, in 2012, RIPE has
expanded to include almost a hundred
researchers across four continents. Long’s
hope is that, in addition to the N.P.Q.
and bypass tweaks, the project will come
up with half a dozen other ways to “im-
prove” photosynthesis. A team in Aus-
tralia is looking at how to speed carbon
dioxide’s journey to RuBisCo, and a
team in England is looking at what hap-
pens right after RuBisCo does its job.
The next step would be to get these ge-
netic modifications into globally signif-
icant crop plants—in addition to soy
and potatoes, RIPE is working with corn,
cowpeas, and cassava—and then into
local varieties. (Farmers in different parts
of the world plant different strains of
corn and cassava that have been bred
for local conditions.)
Long is particularly keen on get-
ting photosynthetically souped-up seed
to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, a re-
gion that didn’t much benefit from the
yield gains of the original Green Rev-olution. Today, more than two hun-
dred million people there are chron-
ically undernourished.
“If we can provide smallholder farm-
ers in Africa with technologies that
will produce more food and give them
a better livelihood, that’s what really
motivates the team,” Long told me.
One of the Gates Foundation’s stipu-
lations is that any breakthroughs that
result from RIPE’s work be made avail-
able “at an affordable price” to compa-
nies or government agencies that sup-
ply seed to farmers in the world’s
poorest countries.
Before any of RIPE’s creations could
be planted in sub-Saharan Africa,
though, or anywhere else, for that mat-
ter, all sorts of licenses would have to
be obtained. (The gene-editing tech-
niques that Long and his colleagues are
using are themselves often patented.)
Then the altered genes would have to
be approved by the relevant agency in
the nation in question, and the alter-
ations would have to be bred into local
varieties. So far, only a handful of Af-
rican countries have O.K.’d genetically
modified crops, and most of the approv-
als have been for G.M. cotton. A re-
cent study noted that at least two dozen
G.M. food crops—some modified for
insect resistance, others for salt toler-
ance—have been submitted to regula-
tory agencies in the region but remain
in limbo.
“A host of viable technologies con-
tinue to sit on the shelf, frequently due
to regulatory paralysis,” the study ob-
served. (In the U.S., practically all of
the soy and corn grown is genetically
modified; other approved G.M. food
crops include apples, potatoes, papayas,
sugar beets, and canola. In Europe, by
contrast, G.M. crops are generally
banned.) Meanwhile, to the extent that
attitudes toward G.M. foods have been
surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa, a ma-
jority of people seem to be leery of them.
A recent study conducted in Zimbabwe,
for example, found that almost three-
quarters of the respondents believed
them to be “too risky.” And smallholder
farmers don’t have enough land to leave
buffer zones, which means that, if they
grow G.M. crops that cross-pollinate,
these could mix with, or contaminate,
their non-G.M. neighbors.
When I asked Long about the ad-“All the quarters, now!”