Jonathan McRae

Future Proof Extra with Jonathan McRae.

Proudly supported by Research Ireland on Newstalk.

Welcome back to Future Very Fun News Talk.

This is our weekly science program here on the station.

I hope you're enjoying it.

If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us, science at newstalk.com.

Now, GMO foods are, of course, a controversial subject.

A lot of people would seem a little reluctant to consume something that has been altered or re-engineered by humans.

The only problem with that logic is that almost everything you can buy to eat in your local supermarket, apples, oranges, everything,

has been engineered to some degree, including that humble apple in your lunchbox.

And Kate Evans is professor in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University.

They make a lot of apples.

And she's the woman behind a whole new breed.

It's called the Sunflower.

She joins me now.

Kate, welcome to the program.

Yeah.

So apples, have they changed a lot since before, since, I don't know, when they were fully natural and we hadn't, you know, even thought about crossbreeding or anything like our apples is dramatically different in the same way as a chihuahua is dramatically different to a wolf.

And so, I mean, did sweet apples just not exist at all?

Because I'm wondering how we got, we went from, you know, bitter apples of olden days to something as incredibly sweet as a pink lady.