Where I see really a lot potential for genetically-modified food, is in space. There, the constraints are completely different, so it can be extremely beneficial to be able to design your crops as you wish - control water usage, respiration, growth patterns, flowering patterns, number and size of fruits, etc.
Another thing I was thinking about - not related to GMO, but I'll throw it out in case anyone from HN knows more about it - would it be possible to control plants using hormones? E.g. to manually "order" the plant to stop growing leaves and start growing fruits, or to grow in a particular direction (this could probably be done with light as well) or pattern, etc.
I personally think that improvements to the nutritional value of the product would be of great interest. It is mentioned in the article but I didn't see any metrics.
I'm not saying there would be only benefits, I'm just saying that the tradeoffs are different... Earth-food works, so GMO can either marginally improve it, make it marginally worse, or make it really worse (i.e. it's the tail risk I'm worried about, same as with climate change). Space food is currently impossible, so almost anything we do will be neutral or an improvement. Also, as I mentioned, the constraints are completely different - up-front costs are mostly irrelevant, mass and speed of growth are the problem - so foods that are net negative on Earth (e.g. because they have to be produced in a lab and are hugely expensive) might be viable in space.
"I'm not saying there would be only benefits [in space]...
...Space food is currently impossible,so almost anything we do will be neutral or an improvement"
So in the first comment I read that there will be only benefits in space, and in this one that there will be, practically speaking - only improvements?
Another thing I was thinking about - not related to GMO, but I'll throw it out in case anyone from HN knows more about it - would it be possible to control plants using hormones? E.g. to manually "order" the plant to stop growing leaves and start growing fruits, or to grow in a particular direction (this could probably be done with light as well) or pattern, etc.