ABSTRACT
Nearly 400 years ago, the English scientist-philosopher Francis Bacon envisioned a time when the plants and animals on the earth were the starting materials for refashioning biological life forms ac cording to human design.2 To a degree, agricultural scientists have been fulfilling Bacon’s prophecy through crossbreeding of crops and animals. We have seen the results of these genetic experiments in the highly developed domesticated varieties of corn and tomato plants, which have evolved from wild relatives of these plants that would to day seem unsuitable to our palette. For example, the North American subsidiary of the Swiss agri-biotechnology company Syngenta re cently announced the result of years of consumer research and cross breeding in its five pound seedless, miniature spherical watermelon.3
