James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

January 8, 2010

Shortest Book Review Yet!

Filed under: Book Reviews — James @ 5:34 pm

After posts yesterday and the day before.

If you’re interested in plant genetics or agriculture or biodiversity, read about Nikolai Vavilov. But I wouldn’t recommend reading “Where Our Food Comes From” (though I’m personally glad to have read it since I probably otherwise never would have heard of the guy). On second thought, you might like it. I kept getting angry with the author even as I was fascinated by the subject.

Case in point:

The corporate and academic plant breeders who are the most common recipients of seeds from those repositories typically do work that is a poor substitute for that done on-farm by vernacular plant breeders, traditional farmers.

’nuff said.

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