Plant breeding in the public interest

Patrick Foley patfoley at csus.edu
Fri Jun 9 13:17:39 EDT 2000


Bruce,

    I heard Lewontin give a talk on this at Davis. I haven't seen it in print.
Lewontin is not always unbiased about capitalism, but he usually has ideas
worth looking into seriously. Do you think after more than 70 years of corn
breeding research we could not have bred pure lines that perform as well as
the hybrids? An order of magnitude sounds impressive, but how many years of
breeding would have changed that?
    Don't you think that land grant agricultural universities have a mission
to benefit the general interest? I have no problem with public resources
benefitting commercial enterprises so long as it is in the public interest.
When the general public interest and more narrow commercial interests
conflict, as they often do in the seed production and pesticide businesses,
lets go with the public interest.

Patrick

Bruce Walsh wrote:

> Pat:
>
> Coud you give my Dick's reference.  Just having reviewed all the corn
> literature up trhough the 1940's (for ourchapter in selection with
> crossbreeding), Dick seems to be very off the mark. The work required to
> obtain pure lines that perform as well as the hybrids is order of
> magnitude more work than selecting for the best lines giving excellent
> hybrids.  Further, it would take multiple generations (=years in maize) to
> breed such pure-breeding lines with outstanding perfornace, while the
> hybrids has this perfornace staight out of the shoot.  If this were done,
> I'm sure DIck would write a piece about big business screwing the local
> farmer by holding upthese high perforance lines (the hyrbid seed) while
> waiting for the holy grail of a high performing pure line.
>
> Further, it is likely much more cost effective to have businesses develope
> these lines.
>
> Peace
>
> Bruce
>
> ps excuse the typos --- away from my normal mail program


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