Latin American researchers are using gene editing to breed hardier varieties of staple crops and fruits, according to an Alliance for Science Live webinar. Right: Researcher Claudia Stange/ChileBio Among them are Claudia Stange Klein, a professor in the Department of Biology of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Chile, who is currently using CRISPR to breed tomato and kiwi varieties that can tolerate drought and soil salinity. She is also editing apples to increase their nutritional profile with a higher content of carotenoids and resist the oxidation that causes browning after they are cut. Paul Chavarriaga, leader of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT’s) Genetic Transformation and Genome Editing Platform in Colombia, is focusing on improving rice, beans, cassava and cacao. The research on rice is intended to breed resistance to the white leaf virus, a very common disease in Latin America that kills the leaves of the plant and adversely affects yields. Consumers ultimately will benefit from the team’s work to improve the digestibility of beans. With cacao, the source of chocolate, they are targeting the genes responsible for the roots absorbing heavy metals in a bid to reduce the amounts of toxic metals in harvested cacao seeds.