The future lies with a combination of conventional breeding with precise gene-editing, rather than gene transplants from other species.

This will also assist efforts to produce new varieties of pea, both by genetic engineering and by conventional breeding.

So its new blackcurrant breeds are all engineered and propagated using conventional breeding methods.

No one knows how much genetic modification was involved and, as with all other new varieties of foods produced by conventional breeding, it has never been assessed for safety.

The scientists argued that crops had been artificially improved for centuries through conventional breeding techniques, which led to genetic changes.