Genetically engineering crops to be colourful could help farmers produce food without using herbicides, as it would make it easier to spot weeds, scientists have said.

This will be increasingly important as hardy, climate-resistant “weeds” are grown for food in the future, the authors have written in their report published in the journal Trends in Plant Science.

The lead author Michael Palmgren, a plant scientist from the University of Copenhagen, told the Guardian: “It can be modifications of hairs, leaf shape, light emitted at wavelength we cannot see. Anything could work on a large scale. The challenge of distinguishing a weed from a crop becomes imminent when we start breeding weeds.”

He said new crops were hard to distinguish from weeds, so it would be important to find a way to tell them apart. The paper suggests the crops’ genomes could be altered so they express pigments such as anthocyanins, which give blueberries their colour, or carotenoids, which make carrots orange.

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