| #6 |
Read a fascinating article about potato breeding last night.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/...ial-potato
This was a look at how science is trying to overcome the inherent difficulty in breeding new potatoes. Currently it can take upto 15 years to find a potato with all the traits required for a particular climate or to be resistant to a certain disease and to breed sufficient tubers for commercial production.
There is a Dutch company trying to inbreed a potato to make the seed and potato identical. As this offers much cheaper manufacture for developing countries.
What I found most fascinating is how they have spend the last 10 years hunting down the 109 wild potatoes to attempt to find new genetic material that will cope with pests and diseases in hotter and more humid weather.
In a couple of days I’ve gone from not truly understanding the purpose of TPS, to wanting a wild seed variety from Brazil that is weedy but grows in both periodic wet and drought hot conditions and has little hairs to resist Insect attack. It might only be the size of a poppy plant but how cool is that a plant that laughs at blight.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/...ial-potato
This was a look at how science is trying to overcome the inherent difficulty in breeding new potatoes. Currently it can take upto 15 years to find a potato with all the traits required for a particular climate or to be resistant to a certain disease and to breed sufficient tubers for commercial production.
There is a Dutch company trying to inbreed a potato to make the seed and potato identical. As this offers much cheaper manufacture for developing countries.
What I found most fascinating is how they have spend the last 10 years hunting down the 109 wild potatoes to attempt to find new genetic material that will cope with pests and diseases in hotter and more humid weather.
In a couple of days I’ve gone from not truly understanding the purpose of TPS, to wanting a wild seed variety from Brazil that is weedy but grows in both periodic wet and drought hot conditions and has little hairs to resist Insect attack. It might only be the size of a poppy plant but how cool is that a plant that laughs at blight.
A pocket knife is not a weapon in the right hands it’s an essential garden tool.
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