another perspective

[kctomato]

thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2009/10/myth-of-monocultures.html

[Tom Wagner]

I have read this link some time ago but thanks for allowing folks to review it.

Because THE BOTANY OF DESIRE is but one of those books (2002) that seems to shake the very foundation of the book reading elite, I catch up with the major tenets of the books sooner or later. I suppose I should try to find the book in the library or get it for $10 delivered from Amazon, but I think I know the arguments well.

The interesting part of the link that catches my attention was....

Picture a landscape filled with many different kinds of potatoes. According to the classic version of this story, a parasite that stumbles upon a new way to break into a certain potato variety may wipe out all individuals of this variety but it won't kill EVERY potato on the landscape.

The problem with this story is that plants varieties that look very different don't necessarily have different disease and pest resistance genes.

...and this dove-tails with my emphasis on diversity, not only from looks, colors, flavors, etc., but real diversity! My idea of diversity in potatoes is to have inter-crossing of successful potato varieties constantly recharged into true seed and tested for segregating resistances each year. The fact that I get many new clones from the Potato Introduction Station each year adds to my diversity collection. It does no good to stick with a handful of the same varieties each year and again, thinking that this perspective solves anything especially if that is all you have to fight monoculturalism.

[PatrickW]

Since Matt made this post on his blog, I've had a discussion with him on my own blog, and I mentioned Tom's potatoes as an example:

www.patnsteph.net/weblog/2010/02/monsanto-in-cyberspace/#comments

There's an expression that says 'if you ever want to correct wrong information, publish it on the Internet'. I'm under the impression Matt as much as anything is challenging his own view of things by publishing it on the Internet, and is keen to get constructive feedback from others. Matt seems like a nice guy.

Matt has a PhD, and is working on 'unintended side-effects and safety of plant genetic engineering'. He's not the bad guy, and in fact he and the blogs that do promote GE seem to keep their distance and don't seem to have a lot in common.

I used to be a fan of Michael Pollan, but over time I'm less and less impressed with what he says. It's fine with me if someone wants to dispute his view of things!

[Tom Wagner]

Thanks, Patrick, for taking me off to the many tangents of life on the Internet! Just reading your link was enough---- but the follow-up links led me to peruse way too much information. Even your quotation led me to a search. The one that really spoke to me was in the link below. I may fail as a reliable source of information but that doesn't mean that I can't learn to package my information better for the future and allow others to interpret at their own peril.

Evaluating Internet Research Sources
www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

What I came out with was this:
Metainformation = information about information = leading to Controlled vocabularies providing a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval so that one can:
Challenge, Adapt, File, Evaluate

Another perspective of my potato breeding work is that my broad spectrum breeding lies apart from the constant challenges, etc., of the outside world which tends to diminish diversity, but allows me to select portions of my work for the (Challenge, Adapt, File, Evaluate) template.

Too much of what I do is total expansion of genetic diversity. But at the same time I perform bottle-necking of some lines through (say Late Blight tolerance) and expand once again.

Doing what I can do to fight monoclonalism!