| Here's something that bothers me. The super strains of wheat came from crossing a wide variety of diverse wheat species, just one example the sturdy stalk came from a Japanese dwarf variety. But now the further refinement of the vast majority of these original varieties has stopped. If they still exists, it's only as a curiosity or as stored seed in vaults. The new super strains, were bred by moving them up and down the globe to get more harvests each year. This made them able to grow almost anywhere. That's fantastic. But why did we stop there? Why not keep going and now refine them to the location? Near the equator days are the same length year round and it's hot and humid. Near the poles in summer you can have almost continuous light. If we have one variety that can give high yields in both extremes, imagine how yield could be increased if we refined that variety and adapted it to the extremes? Why isn't there a massive international effort constantly developing new better, higher yielding and more disease resistant verities? It would be difficult to make private investment in this profitable. It takes a lot of time, a good bit of effort, and improvements are incremental. It's difficult to make that profitable, especially when you can invest in fertilizer instead. |
I briefly searched and can't find sources, but I believe the wheat of 1900 used around 12% of its energy to make food and the rest to sustain its own structure. Now it's something like 90% of the energy the wheat receives goes towards making food.