The article is long. For those who don't want to read it, basically Monsanto is using it's high tech GMO measuring equipment to selectively breed natural plants (not gene splicing).

The advantage is that through high tech screening, they can start with better germplasm, identify the genes they want, and identify whether the corresponding naturally bred crosses will have the desirable genes without growing out the crosses.

This gives Monsanto a huge advantage in speeding up selective breeding, even though the crossing is done naturally.

Just to illustrate that advantage, Fruit Acres originally planted 8000 peach trees to select the best 11 varieties originally released in their Stellar peaches line. That means they had to grow 8000 trees and graft them to get 11 peaches. Comparatively speaking, Monsanto wouldn't have to grow out and graft anything to get the best cultivars. Furthermore, since they can "pre-screen" their germplasm, the odds are stacked highly in their favor they can get better cultivars than traditional selective breeding.

Opponents can't claim the food is GMO and there is no regulatory process for release because the food is completely natural (as natural as any selective breeding).

This completely changes the paradigm of selective breeding. Technology is moving very rapidly.

In terms of vegetables at least, the diversity of amazing varieties is already there, it just needs to be preserved before being lost. This technology would really be useful for fruit trees though, that take years to grow out and evaluate.

Basically, a huge misinformation campaign is forcing them to do a ton of extra work to achieve the same results. Which should drive up the price of their seed.

As to good looking veggies/fruit that don't taste like anything, that seems to be what the market wants. It's tough to taste fruit in the store. It's not tough to tell if a fruit doesn't look good. Free market and all.

Monsanto has managed to make huge amounts of money. Whatever they are doing the apparently get it.

The technology is there, and certainly can be used for fruit trees, but it takes time to study the genetic makeup of trees
to find useful genes that tell you something. This will happen in the future, good article thanks!

As to the overall idea, this method is nothing new. I remember seeing my brother-in-law do this with wheat when I visited him in his lab over ten years ago, and he was just doing pretty normal work for the crop science PhD student he was at the time.