“The worry is that as crops are engineered to a state of uniform genetic perfection, they will lose their protective variability. When you drive past a field of corn today, every stalk in it is identical to every other—not just extremely similar, but eerily, molecularly identical. Replicants live in perfect harmony since none can outcompete any others. But they also have matching vulnerabilities. In 1970, the corn world suffered a real fright when a disease called southern corn-leaf blight started killing corn across America and it was realized that practically the entire national crop was planted from seeds with genetically identical cytoplasm. Had the cytoplasm been directly affected or the disease proved more virulent, food scientists all over the world might now be scratching their heads over ears of teosinte and Bryson, Bill. At Home (pp. 70-71). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ”