Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[GTman1]

gonna have to call BS on this

Good to have you back, Zen.

And yes, you are right. Producing spider silk in alfalfa is one giant stack of BS.

I covered this years ago.

Some on here will think DD consists of getting razzle dazzled by a high school style chart made from clip art.

Real DD would mention all the pitfalls and reasons why spider silk production in plants will never leave a lab.

Anyone that's ever done deep dd on alfalfa for spider silk production will have no doubt seen the resulting photos of the alfalfa leaves.

The integrated spider silk protein shows up as large dead spots on the leaves. This is likely because spider silk protein doesn't contain chlorophyl. It also hinders the natural growth of the plant.

This is fine if you are doing these experiments in a lab. However, alfalfa is pollinated by insects. Imagine a farmer of a normal alfalfa field next door gets his alfalfa field pollinated by the spider silk alfalfa? He would loose his yield and may even have to completely replant his crop. And who knows how quickly it could spread to many other alfalfa fields, creating a disease that would jeopardize all alfalfa.

This is why the USDA would never approve such a product.

Not to mention, the yields of actual spider silk protein are extremely low and processing them to a powder and then to silk fiber is highly inefficient

On the other hand. Silkworms cannot survive without human intervention and have never threatened their wild counterparts.