Gene Editing and Seed Stealing (Chee Yoke Ling, Edward Hammond, Project-Syndicate)

Four hundred years ago, John Rolfe used tobacco seeds pilfered from the West Indies to develop Virginia’s first profitable export, undermining the tobacco trade of Spain’s Caribbean colonies. More than 200 years later, another Briton, Henry Wickham, took seeds for a rubber-bearing tree from Brazil to Asia – via that great colonialist institution, London’s Royal Botanic Gardens – thereby setting the stage for the eventual demise of the Amazonian rubber boom.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/protecting-biodiversity-gene-editing-by-chee-yoke-ling-and-edward-hammond-2016-10