The crisper effect: Fruits, vegetables of the future could heal, kill, aid in defence

Over thousands of years, humans turned even inedible vines into delicious food. Now, new frontiers are opening up.

Can a banana be a snack and a vaccine? Could a cabbage wield a scorpion’s sting?

Above, a representation of how AI views the future of produce. The real evolution is, in some ways, stranger. Already, labs are turning out bananas that pack a vaccine punch and cabbages imbued with a scorpion’s sting.

In labs around the world, scientists are quietly reshaping ideas of what a vegetable can be, as experiments reach for goals far beyond the traditional ones of higher yields, greater nutrition and better taste. Take a look.

The farm-to-table vaccine

The effort to create edible vaccines began in the early 1990s, when researchers first realised that plants could be modified to create foreign proteins, including viral and bacterial antigens. By the turn of the millennium, Charles Arntzen and his team at Cornell University’s Boyce Thompson Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland, had developed and tested the word’s first edible vaccine: transgenic potatoes that produced antigens for the Norwalk virus (a common cause of the stomach flu).

The potatoes never went past the experimental stage, but in the years since, researchers have genetically modified lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and bananas to produce antigens for diseases ranging from cholera and hepatitis B to rabies and HIV.

In laboratory-level tests, these vaccines have triggered immunity in both humans and mice. None have made it to market yet, though.

A key challenge has been ensuring that plants “grow” the right dose per unit. If that were worked out, vaccines could eventually become cheaper, far easier to transport (with no cold chain required) and, of course, easier to administer.

At least in theory, one could simply go to the store, buy a batch and “eat as instructed”.

Fruity vitamins

Kitchen staples have been engineered to pack in added nutrients since at least the 1920s. Everyday examples include iodised salt and fortified wheat flour (with added vitamins and minerals).

What’s next on this front? In 2009, scientists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, published a study in which they explained how they had engineered purple tomatoes high in anthocyanins, a powerful antioxidant usually found in blueberries and blackberries (which are harder to grow and therefore more expensive).

There have since been experiments to infuse tomatoes with GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, a neurotransmitter that reduces stress and anxiety).

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have also spliced lettuce with a human gene that lets it produce a bone-boosting hormone that could help treat osteoporosis.

The plant-military complex

Since the Cold War, both the Americans and Soviets have tried to use animals for espionage. The CIA toyed with the idea of dolphins for underwater surveillance and weapons delivery (a move that never went beyond the experimental stage) and attempted to train cats as spies (which went about as one would expect; they gave up when they realised there really was no way to tell a cat what to do).

Now, it turns out that DARPA (the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has an Advanced Plant Technologies programme that is working to develop “sentinel plants”. These would be genetically modified to change colour when in the presence of certain chemical warfare agents, radiation or bioweapons.

Meanwhile, in 2002, researchers at College of Life Sciences, Beijing, inserted a gene from the Androctonus australis scorpion — whose venom is said to be as toxic as that of the black mamba snake — into garden-variety cabbage. The cabbage, it turned out, could synthesise the venom to produces a toxin lethal to insects, particularly cabbage-munching caterpillars, but harmless to humans. How’s that for a superfood?