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High tech fancy apple breeding

 
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SS our technology now is to the level where we can catalog and achieve some traits much faster and much cheaper with less use of fertilizer, sprays, petrochemicals, and water than we could with out it. It's safe to assume that this same technology applied more will make finding other factors reasonable too. I'm not saying to ignore the environment, I'm saying that you cannot understand the true impact of the environment with out understanding the internal genetic environment. At no point in the future of technology that I foresee will ignoring the environment be an appropriate step, but feeding that information into a computer and letting the computer do some of your selection will. Knowing what the genes do lets us know some of what we have, and lets us reject what we know that we do not want. That's the whole idea.

@MP, that pigeon density was probably partially a result of wheat agriculture, like rodents the passenger pigeon was adept at taking advantage of waste grain. That food is eaten by other organisms right now, and distributed differently.  If you read the link that you provided you would have seen that too much fertility can be bad in some cases.
 
                                              
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Emerson White wrote:
SS our technology now is to the level where we can catalog and achieve some traits much faster and much cheaper with less use of fertilizer, sprays, petrochemicals, and water than we could with out it.



then why arent we doing that? so should permaculturalists who are wiling and have the choice plants a few seeds or a lot and select out desirable stock, or wait for this to happen? who decides how the publicly funded projects go? Some are for disease, and other factors but never the full scope.

Just how long would it take them to account for ALL variables, for ALL crops in relation to ALL genetics? Id like to see an educated guess on this.

how long until such projects focus on area like mine that CAN grow these things, but are in general considered non arable and have no non irrigated work being carried out for anything Im aware of and certainly the vast bulk of things atleast?

It's safe to assume that this same technology applied more will make finding other factors reasonable too. I'm not saying to ignore the environment, I'm saying that you cannot understand the true impact of the environment with out understanding the internal genetic environment. At no point in the future of technology that I foresee will ignoring the environment be an appropriate step, but feeding that information into a computer and letting the computer do some of your selection will. Knowing what the genes do lets us know some of what we have, and lets us reject what we know that we do not want. That's the whole idea.


You dont need to understand the internal genetics at all actually.  If X disease is an issue in the area, and your apples dont get it, it doesnt matter how a lab would explain this. in some cases it will directly genetic in other it will be the form that beats disease... It can be hard to tell which as well, look into blights in pears for instance. things blight free in one spot are not in another. On a genetic level you could EASILY of missed that. Because it is form of the tree not genetics.

there are just to many factors to pretend a lab can breed that widely. its a leap of faith to think theyd even try. beside sI dont work in a lab. im not waiting for the lab especially since I live in an extreme place... and I CAN find decent stock to start, and use a percentage of my land to improve things within actual local conditions. I dont need a lab at all. the only thing I DO need is good genetics to work with, which can be trickier for us at this level, but not impossible. the more generations i go through, and select many varieties that work within my area, i can build and build on it all without thinking about it. naturalizing the trees to the area basically.

How many factors does this account for? 200? 400? more? the labs arent even close to building such a data base except select crops, bred for select traits ignore 100 others. If this isnt true show me a major exception? can you show me three?

notice how I keep answering all issues  you raise. Your not acknowledging the vast holes in some aspects of what you saying.

simple wide scale breeding can do things labs wont be able to match for some time. Its pretty clear to me. Perhaps we could with a manhatten style project into it??? I dont see that happening soon though.
 
Emerson White
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Unless you go GMO (called cisgenics when you use all genes from the same species, A lot of people who hate the idea of transgenics don't so much mind cisgenics, but I'll bet MP doesn't like the idea, paul probably doesn't either) you still have to plant a lot of seeds, you just take a leaf or two off of the seedling when its big enough and see if you want to bother to grow it up the rest of the way, eventually a small enough sample may be needed that it can be taken from the seed itself with out harming the embryo but that's further off. That is exactly what they are doing, this firm wants the trait of deep red flesh, so they are selecting for it. A variety of traits have been catalogued so far, but none as complex as the multivariant traits that regulate disease responses, that's a few years past our grasp, but work like this redflesh work will help us to get there. Scientific research builds on itself, and the genetic locations that they mapped out when looking for this trait will make it easier to find the next one that they get funding to look for.

Not only will other factors be taken into account, they literally have to be in order to finish this work. The genes associated with water stress for instance will only be active in water stressed plants, and a variety that handles water stress better than another initially will only be found by looking at varieties that respond to water stress well. After evaluating how apples respond to water stress and the variation we can then discover the genetic underpinnings of that response and better select for varieties that can handle waterstress well as adults, while they are still seedlings.

I am not saying that you need to understand the genetics in order to eventually find resistant strains, I'm just saying that you do if you want to be able to test for them with this technology. You can again and again go for a proof in the pudding approach but as I said before that takes a lot of resources to grow out all those trees, a lot of resources that are wasted if you then proceed to turn 20,000 trees into firewood. Much better to pick out 200 to grow up and turn 19,800 seedlings into compost.

You will certainly miss interesting things in those 19,800 seedlings that you plow under, but if you haven't got the resources to grow that many trees to begin with then you weren't going to see the interesting things in those 19,800 anyways.

The labs right now can only select a handful of traits for apples, probably a whole boatload for corn, soy and wheat, but as time goes on they will get more and more capacity. since they also have the knowledge of traditional plant breeding under their belts I think that you can safely say that they have already eclipsed traditional plant breeding in the number of things that they can do, because taking a mountain and adding a teaspoon of soil to the top of it makes a bigger mountain. This isn't going to replace traditional search methods in the foreseeable future, it's just going to reduce the amount of resources wasted in those pursuits and bring down the cost.

You keep poking holes but I think that they all boil back to the exact same issue, the fact that the technology is not complete yet. This is baby steps, this red apple, this is coal powered steam driven horseless carriages, the 'plant genetics Henry Ford' hasn't made the scene yet, given time we will be able to accurately predict a great deal more than we can today.
 
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Which goes right back to why this is being done, which, again, is not for permaculture.  Nor is it in any way Permaculture methods, which are not needed, they are wanted by people with money to back this specific research.

Same thing with the USDA Apple root work.  It's not for permaculture, its for mechanization.

 
                                              
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   So we agree such a data base doesnt exist.

  Do we further agree that there is a need for more localized agriculture?

  If we do, then do we agree there are dozens and dozens of major zones in our country alone, with differing soils and elevations and diseases and so many other factors? within each of those zones other factors things can be even more divergent.

   do we agree we need a permanent methods of farming, that can retain or increase fertility on a given site?

  Just how big of a database do we need? lets say 50 traits a plant? Its way more then that, but lets keep it easy. There are lets say a mere 100 variables a site, when its actually many more then that.... so 100 variables interacting with 50.... those recessives in the plants, and disease response even different sometimes in other places...

    From my studies into breeding I dont see anyone even working on this database in a from that actually is working at accounting for all variables. Please post some examples if you know of them. Ive read a fair amount of things on breeding work of various groups. not nearly everything but a lot. Ive seen people working on a disease, or a trait like this red apple.

 actually one of the cooler projects i know of was heading full force into production, LOTS of excitement, and it fizzled out last I heard. It was delayed a few years now. It was a corn project that involved crossing to i believe it was dipploperennis, or maybe a dipplo hybrid.... they had a great producing corn, that was extremely drought tolerant, deep roots, and out producing everything around that was irrigated. which this was not. this was in georgia.... I will have to look it up to see if theres ne info on it, but its been delayed awhile now. Like so many of the actually useful projects my breeder friend came across in his time.

 so not trying to sound conspiratorial, but we all know money talks. Is there even a political will to build such a breeding program, to match what perma culturalists could EASILY do themselves if we all decided to??? should we wait for them? Is anyone asking them to do this?

heck the industry sure wont do it... unless its GM stuff and they can own you along with it. theres a few places outside that grasp and unniversities, but industry directs most of it.

Do we even have the money for this? It would be super expensive for us to fund as a country. we are spending to much now. We cant print our way out of things forever, like our dead soils or ways are catching up to us. can we convince folks we need to spend on such a project? Thats actually including ALL variables for ALL regions...

As far as i can tell, i wont have really good growing apples unless I breed them. Plums im on solid footing, a few others.

the labs like Ive said are useful dont get me wrong. But few things we see are heading in the direction I personally feel actually addresses issues we actually face. the great thing is it doesnt matter... I CAN in my back yard do the work myself. Apples a bit trickier then many other things by the way. with many other things, youll always have useful fruit. So perhaps would be more desirable for more folks to invest time into. For my forest set up though I NEED extra trees, for new terra preta, and hugelkultur. i will need a continual source of such things, so constantly needing to thin trees in the 20 percent of my set up that will be for tree breeding, is a bonus actually.

Heck even if labs do start trying to include all variables on site for all crops, (clearly decades off when its an issue NOW) does this mean I should stop anyway? that my meandering wont create a new taste? apples can vary by extremes. and its a complex flavor matrix. Is it likely youll find the tastiest apples ever? no, but its possible. If 1,000,000 permaculturalists each planted on average (my average will by many factors of that) 10 trees for breeding selection every ten years where would we be?
 
Emerson White
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You can breed for whatever ends that you want. You can breed for diversity, you can breed for uniformity, you can breed for bad taste. However the tools developed to breed towards one end can often be turned towards another. Saying that this isn't for permaculture is a lot like saving that the garden spade isn't for permaculture. Sure that's technically true, but that will not stop people from using it for permaculture.
 
                                              
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  Yeah Im sure many folks would use trees from such projects, and other crops... I even said I would depending on the nature of the project. Some thing biotech are just mapping, others Id probably not bother with. Never gm stuff. Id be crossing them to my first generation of keepers.   

  Apples are a bit different then some other trees. With many stones fruits, you could cross a few together that do well enough for you, and continue to save the best of each generation. Most types of nuts also, could be marketable though nuts would take longer then the stone fruits ut a wide margin. you could go through a generation or two and leave it to your kids, in a permie mindset though. thats the world Id love to leave my kids anyway, even if labs DO get it right and Ive got my doubts theres anything in the workd with plans to except singular issues, or even groupings of tougher ones, its just to big for them to focus on all of them imo, and with sound reason to think as much. stone fruits though they produce decently young, and all will have usable fruit. Just like our corn will slowly do better as we save seed a few generations, you can do this with trees to. Orchards trees need replaced (production orchards anyway). so if you were working with something thats always got desirable offspring then in addition to breeding you have adapting, as desirable mutations accumulate through picking out the best each generation. superior things you leave or graft to other trees as you replace the orchard in its time.

Lots of berry bushes it would be an even faster turn around. strawberries to. you can do these things even semi passively with great benefit. as good as most of us outside of key production areas will be likely to see especially.

Its great to hypothesize what this type of lab work COULD do, If they built a massive data base and actually wanted to breed for each region to have locally adapted things. I want to KNOW that such trees will be bred though. How long until these folks breed me a dryland corn, thats VERY short season.  how long until i get my barely and winter peas,and lentils? or any dryland legumes or grains? Keep in mind Im WAY out from regular production zones. If they went by order of importance by most measures Id be towards the end of the list.

Honestly i DO hope the labs keep breeding non GM stuff. I hope they take as many traits as possible to their extremes, it will help my work. yet is so extremely unlikely to replace my work, Id be fooling myself imho to think otherwise.
 
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It's good to see more apple breeding, but red flesh is only one of many potentially desirable traits in an apple. For that matter, doesn't make it more or less nutritious. That depends on many more factors.
 
Emerson White
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SILVERSEEDS wrote:
   So we agree such a data base doesnt exist.

I don't think that any of my posts implied that such a database exists, only that such a database is possible. We have a very extensive database for E. coli and Drosophila melanogaster but certainly not for apples.

  Do we further agree that there is a need for more localized agriculture?

  If we do, then do we agree there are dozens and dozens of major zones in our country alone, with differing soils and elevations and diseases and so many other factors? within each of those zones other factors things can be even more divergent.

   do we agree we need a permanent methods of farming, that can retain or increase fertility on a given site?

We also agree that there needs to be more specialization of agricultural goods for localized conditions (I do not think that being a locavore is necessarily a good move for the environment, because it encourages people to grow things in unsuitable environments) so that we take advantage of the wildly different conditions and are not as vulnerable to disease. and that we need to protect soil fertility and improve it over time.

Just how big of a database do we need? lets say 50 traits a plant? Its way more then that, but lets keep it easy. There are lets say a mere 100 variables a site, when its actually many more then that.... so 100 variables interacting with 50.... those recessives in the plants, and disease response even different sometimes in other places...


Not every bit of variable is going to affect every trait. For most genes the environment with the greatest impact on them is the other genes within the organism, and contrary to popular belief the genes more and more appear to interact in pretty set and regimented ways, I'm not going to give a big long biology lesson here but there are good reasons for this to be the case.

From my studies into breeding I dont see anyone even working on this database in a from that actually is working at accounting for all variables. Please post some examples if you know of them. Ive read a fair amount of things on breeding work of various groups. not nearly everything but a lot. Ive seen people working on a disease, or a trait like this red apple.


It doesn't look like a database because they are just getting the ball rolling on data collection, but everything they do is being recorded and compiled and the data bases are being built behind the scenes. I think the fact that you don't see them says more about the fact that you are not involved in molecular biology than anything else.


 actually one of the cooler projects i know of was heading full force into production, LOTS of excitement, and it fizzled out last I heard. It was delayed a few years now. It was a corn project that involved crossing to i believe it was dipploperennis, or maybe a dipplo hybrid.... they had a great producing corn, that was extremely drought tolerant, deep roots, and out producing everything around that was irrigated. which this was not. this was in georgia.... I will have to look it up to see if theres ne info on it, but its been delayed awhile now. Like so many of the actually useful projects my breeder friend came across in his time.

 so not trying to sound conspiratorial, but we all know money talks. Is there even a political will to build such a breeding program, to match what perma culturalists could EASILY do themselves if we all decided to??? should we wait for them? Is anyone asking them to do this?


If you can improve things you should go do that, everyone in academic biotech is working with the intention of making more sustainable more environmentally friendly, more affordable food production, however there is disagreement about how best to achieve those ends.


heck the industry sure wont do it... unless its GM stuff and they can own you along with it. theres a few places outside that grasp and unniversities, but industry directs most of it.

Do we even have the money for this? It would be super expensive for us to fund as a country. we are spending to much now. We cant print our way out of things forever, like our dead soils or ways are catching up to us. can we convince folks we need to spend on such a project? Thats actually including ALL variables for ALL regions...

As far as i can tell, i wont have really good growing apples unless I breed them. Plums im on solid footing, a few others.

the labs like Ive said are useful dont get me wrong. But few things we see are heading in the direction I personally feel actually addresses issues we actually face. the great thing is it doesnt matter... I CAN in my back yard do the work myself. Apples a bit trickier then many other things by the way. with many other things, youll always have useful fruit. So perhaps would be more desirable for more folks to invest time into. For my forest set up though I NEED extra trees, for new terra preta, and hugelkultur. i will need a continual source of such things, so constantly needing to thin trees in the 20 percent of my set up that will be for tree breeding, is a bonus actually.

Heck even if labs do start trying to include all variables on site for all crops, (clearly decades off when its an issue NOW) does this mean I should stop anyway? that my meandering wont create a new taste? apples can vary by extremes. and its a complex flavor matrix. Is it likely youll find the tastiest apples ever? no, but its possible. If 1,000,000 permaculturalists each planted on average (my average will by many factors of that) 10 trees for breeding selection every ten years where would we be?

You should not stop, so long as it was worth it for you to test apple trees to begin with it will be worth it for you to keep on testing apple trees for years to come. We have money for this because there is a combined educational, environmental, and commercial focus, stacking functions.

SILVERSEEDS wrote:
 Yeah Im sure many folks would use trees from such projects, and other crops... I even said I would depending on the nature of the project. Some thing biotech are just mapping, others Id probably not bother with. Never gm stuff. Id be crossing them to my first generation of keepers.    

 Apples are a bit different then some other trees. With many stones fruits, you could cross a few together that do well enough for you, and continue to save the best of each generation. Most types of nuts also, could be marketable though nuts would take longer then the stone fruits ut a wide margin. you could go through a generation or two and leave it to your kids, in a permie mindset though. thats the world Id love to leave my kids anyway, even if labs DO get it right and Ive got my doubts theres anything in the workd with plans to except singular issues, or even groupings of tougher ones, its just to big for them to focus on all of them imo, and with sound reason to think as much. stone fruits though they produce decently young, and all will have usable fruit. Just like our corn will slowly do better as we save seed a few generations, you can do this with trees to. Orchards trees need replaced (production orchards anyway). so if you were working with something thats always got desirable offspring then in addition to breeding you have adapting, as desirable mutations accumulate through picking out the best each generation. superior things you leave or graft to other trees as you replace the orchard in its time.


It is too big for them to focus on everything, but it's already too big for us to focus on everything, that's why we haven't got a perfect apple yet and probably never will, however they can make progress faster and that's really the goal.

Lots of berry bushes it would be an even faster turn around. strawberries to. you can do these things even semi passively with great benefit. as good as most of us outside of key production areas will be likely to see especially.

Its great to hypothesize what this type of lab work COULD do, If they built a massive data base and actually wanted to breed for each region to have locally adapted things. I want to KNOW that such trees will be bred though. How long until these folks breed me a dryland corn, thats VERY short season.  how long until i get my barely and winter peas,and lentils? or any dryland legumes or grains? Keep in mind Im WAY out from regular production zones. If they went by order of importance by most measures Id be towards the end of the list.

Honestly i DO hope the labs keep breeding non GM stuff. I hope they take as many traits as possible to their extremes, it will help my work. yet is so extremely unlikely to replace my work, Id be fooling myself imho to think otherwise.

Labs will continue to do this kind of research and GMOs and basic chemical research on soils and ecological research on plant microbe communities. You name it someone it trying to figure it out.
 
                                              
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Emerson White wrote:
I don't think that any of my posts implied that such a database exists, only that such a database is possible. We have a very extensive database for E. coli and Drosophila melanogaster but certainly not for apples.



I never said that you said such a database exists. I asked you and in a way that showed I knew we both knew it.  this proves my point alone. Hoe many variables interacting with how many variables? breeding potentially answers those NOW, for ALL our regions, and methods without thinking about it. Such a database doesnt exist and wont for some time.


We also agree that there needs to be more specialization of agricultural goods for localized conditions (I do not think that being a locavore is necessarily a good move for the environment, because it encourages people to grow things in unsuitable environments) so that we take advantage of the wildly different conditions and are not as vulnerable to disease. and that we need to protect soil fertility and improve it over time.



Im not 100 percent locavore in mindset, though conditions might force that on us. However where I live for instance I can grow all staples, many nuts, most of our common temperate fruits and on and on. All in a place considered non arable. Perhaps you wont agree but built within your answer appears to be its own defeat in my opinion that is. Because we DO need more localized ag. Look how few regions actively row good amounts of specific grains? fruits? nuts? If you think that can stand, well I dont remotely agree. the bulk of food it appears to me will and can come locally.

so you agree soil fertility is an issue, so why breed for red apples, when you could breed for a wide range of variables atleast in the best suited site for differing things that would give us tuly adapted apples that would work in a natural type set up. ? that seems to be what you said was ideal, to lesson disease. If we arent do this for the best of regions, can we expect in our lifetimes from such sources for the extremes? I guess that means NOTHING will be bred for me.


Not every bit of variable is going to affect every trait. For most genes the environment with the greatest impact on them is the other genes within the organism, and contrary to popular belief the genes more and more appear to interact in pretty set and regimented ways, I'm not going to give a big long biology lesson here but there are good reasons for this to be the case.



Ha! Im not going to dig up examples but Ive run across many where that wasnt true. Again it all circles around to what your advocating only being able to account for what you include in the datasets. And as I keep saying there are to many variables for to many areas for that to work system wide anywhere remotely soon. If what your saying was true naturalizing a veggy variety wouldnt be remotely as profound, let alone breeding. yet all those variables you cant see or account for are what takes an acceptable variety to a stellar one. All without thinking about it.

It doesn't look like a database because they are just getting the ball rolling on data collection, but everything they do is being recorded and compiled and the data bases are being built behind the scenes. I think the fact that you don't see them says more about the fact that you are not involved in molecular biology than anything else.
Quote



you keep making lots of assumptions here. I know how many databases for various things have been built. You also reframed what type of database I was talking about within your own mind, nothing remotely like that is set to exist and you know it. They CANt build such a database as Im talking. Its simply to much info, it would take a generation at least. For you who doesnt believe we do need as wide a range as possible localized to as many areas as possible, you come at what I said from a totally different angle then I meant it.  

the snide remark didnt help. you know it, I know it... none of them are building such a data set. None of them envisioning it. they are mapping genetics, which for the most part in all reality doesnt help nearly as much as we pretend, only in explaining things later, which is great.

those seemingly HUGE databases your talking about arent even attempting to gauge the relationship of 1000 genetic markers in relation to 1000 various stimulus's. Like you they dismiss it. Which of course proves my point, unless you want to pick and choose which things to include in your reality, like those scientists HAVE to do.... my system though it could be buffered by the lab greatly, automatically accounts for all those things...

If you can improve things you should go do that, everyone in academic biotech is working with the intention of making more sustainable more environmentally friendly, more affordable food production, however there is disagreement about how best to achieve those ends.
Quote



really? Ive seen a very very small amount of such projects myself. super small. Of those they were STILL only accounting for dominate issues of an area, which by default means they were ignoring 1000 smaller things. Its simply the nature of the beast. It could be no other way, and though you reframed it to mean something else so you could pretend we do have large data sets(when they are a fraction of a percent of the ones it would take to compete with breeding on site) we simply arent even trying to do such things. If they beat specific disease (which again can be done in field with WAY less land then you earlier suggested, though more then these means yes) but if they beat a specific disease this WILL be useful for everyone... but again sometimes its form, sometimes its actual resistance. Study bight in pears, we dont even understand that single disease in a single fruit. th breeding I described lets us match it despite the experts not knowing, that single diseas out of hundreds, let alone all those hordes of other variables.


You should not stop, so long as it was worth it for you to test apple trees to begin with it will be worth it for you to keep on testing apple trees for years to come. We have money for this because there is a combined educational, environmental, and commercial focus, stacking functions.



I know your not trying to prove me right, and see things so differently you dont see my points, because they rather clearly show the labs are not superior to in field breeding and wont be for decades, except for specific issues for specific areas. Notice how you have t dance around that point? re frame things? thats just another highlighter on the fact I am indeed right. For specific issues the lab is king, for all issues at once, it cant compete, and likely not in our lifetimes except specific things, certainly not outside of any prescribed area for each thing.

Those stacked functions prove my point if you wanted to see it. within each of those stacks are agendas, and ideals, and ideas, all built into the stack, all putting pressure onto the projects to be shaped as X or Y.... nature makes no designations. Its not stacked for complexity. It is wooven. We need wooven trees, not stacked ones.... Though taking the stacked ones and weaving with them is good, ultimately they need wooven though.


It is too big for them to focus on everything, but it's already too big for us to focus on everything, that's why we haven't got a perfect apple yet and probably never will, however they can make progress faster and that's really the goal.



You should perhaps reframe that to reflect reality. they can make progress on SPECIFIC issues faster. Not system wide issues. Not even region wide issues. They could pick late blloming, tasty, disease resistant etc... even that is complex for a lab, and takes years..... With me in the field presuming Ive got good genetics (and I do for most things) I can do all that without needing to think about it, WHILE also accounting for all those other things those labs just cant, and wont be able to. I know youve basically said that isnt an issue, but I disagree to the core. taking an honest look at all known info, its rather obvious Im right as well. doesnt make the labs any less powerful of a tool, but it acknowledge theres just some things they wont be able to do in our lifetimes, that simply growing things out in the field can do a few generations of in that time. Its simple math. Its accounting for ALL variables. I thought that WAS science.... I think its clear a truly unbiased person who simply wanted results, and wanted local food would see the powerful tools labs are, and may evolve into, and would use them.... but such a person would also see why what I am saying is true. Keep pretending you can pick and choose which things to account for, it will catch up to you.....


Labs will continue to do this kind of research and GMOs and basic chemical research on soils and ecological research on plant microbe communities. You name it someone it trying to figure it out.



I know. Yet terra pretta is in hand and has been studied for over a decade, we are yet to fully understand why it works!!1 yet it does. you proved my point yet again while thinking you proved yours. It takes WAY longer to have full understandings of these things in a lab then you are acknowledging. We need these answers THIS generation. Not for specific issues for specific crops, which by the way they are working on, but not completing anytime soon.

all that research, is painting a better picture of specific things. its GREAT!!! but dont get ahead of yourself. these things are all interconnected with 1000 other things. just like we can do brain surgery now, yet basic nutrition eludes most MDs. Its to big a topic, though we know many specific things, putting them into a cohesive whole isnt easy, especially when you try to account for different people reacting to different things differently. medicine is only now realizing we even HAve to do that, and at a snails pace is inching that way.....

we are fathoms behind in breeding of plants compared to knowledge on nutrition. Yet we still have islands of knowledge not fully incorporated into the whole... the style of breeding I laid out accounted for it all by its very nature. Its how life works. Its complex and inter connected. It is not 2 dimensional.

For the labs to match this it would take decades of vast record keeping. they wont even try to do it likely, because they see a compartmentalized world. again on specific issues the lab wins, on ALL issues the regular breeding wins hands down. and it will for atleast this generation..... Do we have time to wait? is answering key issues enough? Is answering key issues with key genetics enough? or do we need layered answers? do we need answers as complex as the systems the trees grow in?

honestly the data speaks for itself. We eed systems that evolve with the rest of reality. Mine does that without needing to know all aspects as to why. the lab by its nature cant. they dont even work like that. Its not even a goal to do so, oh I know they pretend it is on some stuff, but they focus on a few key issues, and expect the rest to fall in place. that can work sometimes, but never as well as what im saying.

Also with my method youll get a solid percentage as "answers"... all with divergent answers that still work..... so youll also have a wider range of genes for when conditions change, and they will its how life works. In 10 years? 200? 1000? who knows but they will and do. We need to adapt with them. we can as well.  
 
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