Category: Breeding

“The whole world is mostly perennials,” says USDA geneticist Edward Buckler, who studies corn at Cornell University. “So why did we domesticate annuals?” Not because annuals were better, he says, but because Neolithic farmers rapidly made them better—enlarging their seeds, for instance, by replanting the ones from thriving plants, year after year. Perennials didn’t benefit from that kind of selective breeding, because they don’t need to be replanted. Their natural advantage became a handicap. They became the road not taken.

National Geographic goes back to the fork and rounds up the perennial grain story. Nothing new for readers here, of course, but good to see it in the mainstream. And if you want to see one reason why perennial grains are a good idea, just look at the picture above the article. Easily worth 1000 words.