Is there a difference between GE & GMO?

Enter the rainy season and I turn to my inside chores...removing dried seeds from their seed pods.

And catching up on my reading ... checking up on what is new in the world of seeds. Namely, in the genetic engineering sector.

I stumbled onto an article about the difference between the GE and GMO designation. This author stated there is a definite difference between the two terms ... and she is right to a point.

Technically, GMO ... genetically modified organism ... refers to any plant that has been hybridized through pollen transference ... by humans, bees or any other natural process. So any cultivar such as 'Early Girl' tomato and Hosta 'June' are, in fact, GMOs.

'Early Girl' has been purposely bred by hand pollination to produce an early-ripening tomato. 'June' arrived on the gardening scene as a naturally-occurring sport of another hosta ... 'Halcyon'.

The GMO designation also holds true for those varieties that have been crossed within their own family ... broccoli with kale, apricot with plum, plum with cherry. These have all been done by humans using conventional pollen-transfer methods. Sounds a bit weird perhaps, but a perfectly plausible possibility in nature.

I do not think the pluerry ... the plum/cherry cross ... has been released to the market just yet. But the others are available.

In fact, cherry-plum hybrids have been around since the late 19th century. I found one reference listing over 20 different cultivars.

As for the apricot-plum hybrids ... they are called Pluots if the plant has predominantly plum parentage or Apriums if the parentage leans to the apricot side. Both are registered trademark names.

Then there is broccolini ... also known by several other names such as Asparation, brocoletti and Tenderstem. (The first and last are both trade registered names.) This is a natural cross between broccoli and kai-lan, a Chinese broccoli.

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Is there a difference between GE & GMO?