Plant Geneticist Talks at TED2015 Conference

University of California, Davis' Pamela Ronald was one of the speakers in the TED2015 conference held on March 16-20, 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. Ronald is working on genes that make plants resistant to disease and tolerant of stress.

Aside from doing research, she is also a wife to Raoul Adamchack, an organic farmer. In her talk, she stressed that she and her husband have a common goal: to grow good food. "After 20 years of careful study and rigorous peer review by thousands of independent scientists, every major scientific organization in the world has concluded that the process of genetic engineering is as safe or safer as older methods of genetic modification," said Ronald.

She ended her TED talk with these lines: "What scares me most about the loud arguments and misinformation about plant genetics is that the poorest people, the people who most need the technology, may be denied access because of the fears and prejudices of those who have enough to eat."

Read more about her talk at TED Blog.  Watch the TED2015 talks for a fee at TED Live.