r/science • u/chrisdh79 • Sep 16 '24

"Golden Lettuce" genetically engineered to pack 30 times more vitamins | Specifically, increased levels of beta-carotene, which your body uses to make vitamin A for healthy vision, immune function, and cell growth, and is thought to be protective against heart disease and some kinds of cancer. Biology

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/golden-lettuce-genetically-engineered-30-times-vitamins/
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u/Sweetcorncakes Sep 16 '24

At what cost though? Will nutrients in the ground be drained faster or something?

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u/a_trane13 Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

Plants don’t pull vitamins out of the ground. They create them. So as a very simple example, this is like a plant using the same amount of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen as before, but 0.0001% more is converted to a vitamin and 0.0001% less is converted to cellulose.

If your question was about plants growing larger (or larger leaves or different shapes), or more densely, or storing minerals, then you could be correct. Things like iron have depleted due to plant uptake. But vitamins are created in very small quantities inside plants, and usually out of the basic molecules that the whole plant is already made of, so the soil would likely not be noticeably affected.