Protecting Your Food: The Role of Next-Generation Sequencing in Protecting Crops

Genetic modification of agricultural produce is generally done for various reasons such as making the plants drought resistant, increasing crop yields, and lowering food prices etc, and are frequently referred to as GMO agriculture products. In the United States, most corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola crops are GMO. Before such GMO products are approved,  it is important to detect  foreign DNA that could be harmful to consumers. A team of researchers from Osaka University, Japan, used computer simulations to evaluate the feasibility of using k-mer analysis based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect foreign agents in genetically modified potatoes. More details here- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10412624/