Are We Eating Genetically Modified Papaya?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My goal of this project is to find out what percent of California's Hawaiian papaya is genetically engineered and whether the genetically engineered papaya tastes different from normal papaya. Methods/Materials 50mg X-Gluc; 100ml Phosphate buffer saline; 1 Microscope; 1 Digital camera; 1 pipetman; 1 surgical knife; 1 tweezer; 12 petri dishes; 1 tupperware. a. Buy some papayas b. remove all the seeds c. remove jelly coat off the seeds d. cut open seeds in half e. put cut seeds into a petri dish f. apply X-Gluc and phosphate buffer saline g. put petri dishes into the tupperware h. wait 24 hrs. i. record number of genetically engineered seeds j. take pictures k. eat the papayas Results Every single papaya that I had bought had some genetically engineered seeds. Some of them even had almost 50% of their seeds geneticaly engineered. The taste of the genetically engineered papayas were identical to the normal papayas. Conclusions/Discussion Majority of the Hawaiian papaya that which I tested were geneticaly engineered because of cross-pollination. I know this because only about 1/2 or 1/4 of the seeds in most of the papaya were genetically engineered.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Plant Biology · Entry J1610

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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