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by tomp 2905 days ago
I've been wondering recently if there's some way we could "hijack" this sort of signaling mechanisms that plants seem to have... E.g. artificiall encourage the crops to ripen sooner (i.e. when we want them to).

The next step would be, to figure out how to grow just the parts of the plants that we need. I'm guessing internally, plants use some kind of hormone-like signalling mechanism that lets different parts of the plant know what to do. Why do we need a full tree (in particular, bark) when we could just grow apples directly along with a few leaves to "power" them?
1 comments
ryanmercer 2905 days ago
I was thinking about this while driving Wednesday. I'm in a strength sport and have lots of friends in strength sports and a recent conversation with someone made me think "hmmm, we need to figure out the AAS for crops, what's the test-e dbol equivalent".

I think the problem is though, plants are pretty damn finicky and have relatively narrow conditions that will result in proper growth and fruit/vegetable production. The tiniest soil imbalance, too much sun, too little sun, too much water, too little water and blah.

The more important task at hand right now though is proper land management, we're quickly headed for another dust bowl, we are heavily relying on groundwater and depleting groundwater sources here in the U.S. (and especially in countries like India) and farmers are killing themselves at record rates.

We're about to be up shit-creek with a hole in our canoe in the next decade or two.

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tomp 2905 days ago
> plants [...] have relatively narrow conditions

Are you sure about that? Evolution would certainly strive for adaptability... Of course, evolution went through the window when humans started interfering (breeding etc), but still, just looking outside, plants seem to survive (and thrive) in relatively uncontrolled environmental conditions with wild weather swings and varying care (fertilizers, weeding, etc).

On the other hand, I can hardly keep a house plant alive, so there's that.

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ryanmercer 2905 days ago
>Are you sure about that?

I see you've never gardened, or even had a house plant.

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