Question: How do you make the crops resistant?

Hugh Roderick answered on 15 Jun 2010:

I’m using transgenics (genetic modification) to make them resistant to little worms, called nematodes, that live in soil and eat the banana plant roots causing the plant to fall over and any banana fruits to be lost. I take a gene from rice or maize and put it into the banana plant genome, the bananas plant then makes the protein that the gene tells it to and when the nematode tries to eat the root it also eats the protein which stops it from being able to digest the root it has eaten. The protein I use was chosen because the way it works means that it isn’t harmful to people if they eat it and because it is already eaten by people in rice or maize.