This is a reasonable question. The goal is not to make it unnaturally sweet, but to retain the natural sweetness that makes it taste good. It is just enough that you don't experience it as harsh. It is not like sweet corn, which I find too sweet to have with food.

The way to retain the sweetness is to get it to consumers faster. That is easier if you are close by.

Many commenters here seem not to like broccoli. I bet that for many, it is because too much of the sugar had been metabolized, and the flavor was out of balance. Getting that balance right is important. (Broccoli has a very high metabolic rate, which uses up the stored sugar in just a few hours even at refrigerator temperature.)

Cooking it to death does not help either. After harvest, the fibers get tougher. Freshly picked broccoli is so tender that it cooks in a couple minutes.

Thus, our goal is not to produce some treacly junk food, but to provide a really fresh, high-quality broccoli with balanced flavors. The breeding work will make it easier to produce local broccoli in the Eastern US. The shorter distance to market is what will make it taste better.

We are not doing any genetic engineering on this project. The basis for the project is to meet the demand for locally grown broccoli in the east. Even though many /. commenters are apparently not big buyers, eastern consumers go through something like half a billion pounds of the stuff every year. As far as I can tell, buyers would like to get local broccoli, but not GMO broccoli. So that is one reason not to genetically engineer it. There are many technical reasons why it isn't effective as well. You also ask about patents. These days, plant breeding is similar to commercial software development. Everyone owns the technology they develop. Sometimes it is patents, but there are other avenues for protection as well. If you want to use someone else's technology you have to license it. I hope /. readers are familiar with that model. In this project, there are both public and private breeding programs that will develop new genetic combinations, and I expect then to do some cross licensing where it makes sense. (I am not one of the breeders, so I don't expect to patent anything.) The final product available to farmers will be varieties that you can buy as seed. It is standard practice for new varieties to have IP protection, so the seed companies will likely treat the varieties from this project in the same manner. Thomas Björkman Cornell University easternbroccoli.org