US firm plans to change consumers' minds about genetically 'edited' food

Johnston, Iowa

GREEN stalks have only just begun to sprout in the test fields where biotech giant DuPont Pioneer is planting rows of a new genetically edited corn. But across the street, in the company's sprawling research campus, executives are already fretting about how to sell it to the world.

On one hand, this corn is a revolution. It will probably be the first plant to go on the market that is developed through the cutting edge genome-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas.

On the other hand, the industry's last big breakthrough of this kind - genetically modified organisms, or GMOs - was an unqualified public relations disaster, even according to its…