Climate change will make it increasingly difficult to grow crops across many parts of the world. Startup Pairwise is using CRISPR gene editing to develop plants that can better withstand adverse conditions.
The company uses cutting-edge gene editing to produce crops that can withstand increasingly harsh climate conditions, helping to feed a growing population even as the world warms. Last year, it delivered its first food to the US market: a less-bitter–tasting mustard green. It’s now working to produce crops with climate-resilient traits, through partnerships with two of the world’s largest plant biotech companies. Read the full story.
—James Temple
Pairwise is one of our 10 climate tech companies to watch—our annual list of some of the most promising climate tech firms on the planet. Check out the rest of the list here.
MIT Technology Review Narrated: How to measure the returns on R&D spending
Given the draconian cuts to US federal funding for science, it’s worth asking some hard-nosed money questions: How much should we be spending on R&D? How much value do we get out of such investments, anyway?
To answer that, in several recent papers, economists have approached this issue in clever new ways. And, though they ask slightly different questions, their conclusions share a bottom line: R&D is, in fact, one of the better long-term investments that the government can make.