Scientists are already using gene editing enzyme CRISPR to alter human embryos and make antibiotics less resistant. And though experts have predicted that crops were soon to follow, there hasn't yet been one close to hitting the market. Now, researchers at DuPont Pioneer, the agriculture branch of the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, have published a study about a strain of corn engineered with CRISPR to be more resistant to drought. Once it receives government approval, this could soon be the first-ever CRISPR-modified crop to go on sale.

The technique outlined in the study, published August 17 in Plant Biotechnology Journal, is particularly difficult in plants, says Joyce Van Eck, a professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute, focused on plant research and affiliated with Cornell University. "The fact that they've done this, and shown success with it is really amazing. It's groundbreaking," she says.

For millennia, humans have been crossing strains of crops to make them healthier, hardier, and easier to cultivate. But the term "genetically modified organism" (GMO) typically refers to crops with a genetic code that has been altered in the lab. This often means that scientists are adding DNA from other organisms to make this crop better in some way—increasing the amount of food you can get from one plant in less time, making it more resistant to disease or extreme environmental conditions like frost or drought, or increasing its appeal to consumers by slowing the rate at which it spoils. In the past, scientists have made these genetic changes with two main tools, called zinc finger nucleases and TALENS. These enzymes are typically delivered into plant cells using a specially-designed virus or a gene gun, which bombards cells with the genetic material researchers are trying to add. And though these techniques work to alter a plant's genome, they're more expensive to create and more limited in where they can alter the genetic code than CRISPR.