Truth or agenda in breeding?

  I put this here because this breeding project had massive potential for corn, a staple crop. this corn had much lower water needs, grew on poorer soil, and used less nitrogen. If it should be in another forum section sorry.

   http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/050606/scientist1.html

   Its a three page article but an eye opener. We get rhetoric that theres people working on world changing breeding. A friend of mine in the field for decades though has seen many projects in line with this one quietly disappear.

    The article touches upon how her corns were received by her fellow "experts" Keep in mind this corn literally changed history. those GMOs for dryland corn being worked on? cant stand in the way of money. This likely dwarfed them and used less nitrogen, and grew on poorer soils.

  She has since been proven right, and it was supposedly going to be released in 2008, which didnt happen.

    so this has been known, and possible for over a decade now!!! it has yet to reach the hands of the masses. these traits beat current corn that uses irrigation into the dirt. 1000 projects should have happened immediately to put those wild genetics into the best varieties for each region.

    In another thread a poster assured me, the experts have our backs. this isnt the only project received like this either, but I have a good link for this one. Others just go away. hopefully this one doesnt.....

This sounds like a good thing, I didn't make it all the way through the article, but it sounds like she just used normal breeding to create  her corn, and not messing with the DNA on a cellular level.
Our policy is to not have anything to do with GMO type products, however, we find nothing wrong with a plant that has been improved by selective breeding, so long as it breeds true to itself.  Any hybrid plant that can do that we consider to be heirloom quality and would use it if we needed to.

Selective breeding has been done for centuries and there is nothing wrong with that so long as the results can sustain themselves by breeding true to the result.

She should consider, if possible, of just marketing her product herself.
Any plant that can work in extreme situations would be great, so long as they did not cause other problems somehow.

KurtW wrote:


Selective breeding has been done for centuries and there is nothing wrong with that so long as the results can sustain themselves by breeding true to the result.

She does intend to sell it as a hybrid actually. but it was bred through conventional means.

So you could buy it and grow it out, save seeds, and select it into an open pollinated variety with the same traits. with corn hybrids do have a bit extra vigor, and always will its just the nature of corn, but with the results of this variety, you could do as well as any current hybrids in worse areas even Id guess with a solidly selected OP variety from this material. Being complicated genetics it might be a bit trickier then it is to de hybridize then other hybrids but certainly doable.

since we are on the topic, if you want all open pollinated varieties that breed true that great. I do as well (besides in my evolving breeding projects). so dont get me wrong, but maintaining landraces can add benefit (or starting your own), and also hybrids in general. certain crops just perform better as hybrids, usually most things that are out crossers like corn. All hybrid means is that it was two varieties crossed together. when you cross the same two parent varieties together with the same one as the donor and the same one as receiver, youll always get the same hybrid. so I personally see no issues with creating hybrids. Heck you can make your own, with some things without to much trouble. In fact if you looked at it from the plants perspective, they work real hard in many cases to try to cross with as distant of plants as possible.