Question: I was looking at your profile and I didn't know what African crops resistant to pests means.

Hugh Roderick answered on 15 Jun 2010:

It means I’m stopping little worms called nematodes that eat the roots of banana plants (but hopefully in the future I’ll be working on other African crops). And the way I’m doing this is by putting a gene from rice or maize into banana plants so they are able to defend themselves by preventing the nematodes from being able to eat their roots.

And I’m doing this because when the nematodes eat the banana plant roots they cause the plant to be weakened and to possibly fall over which means less banana fruit is produced. And in a lot of Africa a lot of people rely on cooking bananas for their food and to earn money.