Nibbles: PPB, AnGR, Children of the corn, African wildlife & China, Japanese plastic food, Hedge balls, Falanghina et al., NY hipster kava bar, Genetics & diet

One Reply to “Nibbles: PPB, AnGR, Children of the corn, African wildlife & China, Japanese plastic food, Hedge balls, Falanghina et al., NY hipster kava bar, Genetics & diet”

  1. “evolutionary plant breeding”
    This article is full of praise of specific local adaptation. But farmers do not in general use such varieties. There are various clues on-farm that specific adaptation is of little use. For example, most food is grown from crops introduced from other continents; most farmers source seed away from their growing conditions – higher, wetter, drier or whatever (we have this in Scotland with potato seed for all across Europe); most farmers regularly change their varieties for others sourced from elsewhere. I think that, most of all, specific local adaptation may be to local constraining pests and diseases, inevitably giving local lower yields. Agroecologists are looking at only part of the spectrum of biological constraints faced by farmers. More of that agrobiodiversity may be a very bad thing if some bits are evolving faster than the crops.

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