HUGE respect for breeders

[mensplace]

After doing some morning reading re dominant versus recessive genes in tomatoes I found this:
http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Genes.html

Now THAT really raises the bar in terms of the many factors the breeders here and elsewhere have to consider! Obviously, with so many different variables, breeding is a tad bit more than "Well, I like the shape and size of this one, but the flavor of this one". Seems the possibilities, like the number of varieties today are virtually endless.

Still, in looking across the entire spectrum of Beefsteaks today, I still wonder whether the real differences in some of them is really significant when compared to the many, many other beefsteak varieties. But, I'm still something of a bigot...I still prefer a nice round tomato of a baseball to softball size, even if flattened a bit, with pretty exterior, an even balance of well distributed locules and flesh, and an intense sweet/salty/acidic tanginess....whatever that one is. Throw in heightened disease resistance and productivity and I am HAPPY! THAT, to me, is the perfect tomato.

I tip my hat to ALL breeders!

[Tom Wagner]

After doing some morning reading re dominant versus recessive genes in tomatoes I found this:
http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Genes.html

Now THAT really raises the bar in terms of the many factors the breeders here and elsewhere have to consider!

Your title for this thread got my attention: HUGE respect for breeders

Having spent a good part of my life breeding all sorts of plants and animals...I usually feel the negative aspects of that so-called respect; namely it is a waste of time, etc., but an occasional veneration is appreciated. So I guess I should say thanks, however I am just one of foolish folks doing this kind of work. There are quite a few people here on TVille that are dabbling in breeding, therefore they should acknowledge your respect as well.

That said, I wanted to reflect on the Davis gene bank for a moment. That link you offered for us to peruse is a complicated list of genes to digest. Allow me to discuss a few things!

The list of genes numbers about 1221. Of those about 104 are dominant and the rest are recessive. Capital letters denote dominance...lower case letters means recessive. That is a 1 out of 12 ratio of dominant to recessive. There is a reason for that ratio...most mutations are lethal or detrimental to the plant and if that gene is dominant the plant's option of survival is lessened greatly. A recessive can bonce around and be part of the population without the heterozygous line being a major problem for seed survival. There have been obviously many dominant genes that have occurred, but somewhere along the way no seed was saved of those because of its failure.

Since I have requested germplasm from the Davis site as well as others, I have been one to work with recessives a lot, in fact many of my most well known varieties are exemplary of that. But so many of those genes are just not worth it when in a homozygous plant and even if you request the seed, you will often receive a mix bag of seed: seedlings which will segregate for plants without the gene in mind, heterozygous, and homozygous. The homozygous seedlings may fail before you even get to see the phenotype of that trait or the plant fails to mature to fruition. You end up with that trait in a ugly version of a tomato plant and wonder why in the blazes you wanted it!

Male sterile lines can be maintained only in the carrier version, so that the seedlings will segregate 1:4 for male sterile lines. I could go on but I think you understand the difficulty a breeder has to fully utilize the vast majority of those genes.

Tom Wagner

[mensplace]

I think that in many ways the breeders are facing pressures today. Pressure from the public who simply do not trust the major players, (probably many of whom fund research for the land grant colleges and private organizations), players such as the big ag corporations, USDA, etc. who are pushing genetic engineering to suit their own product demands, or for ever increased disease resistance and productivity. Meanwhile, such factors as flavor and similar sensory issues will not get funding or approval. As I have communicated with different researchers in the potato community, the market demand and demographic factors will ultimately play a huge role there just as it has done with apples, tomatoes and even the varieties of vegetables and fruits that immigrants and a new age/demographic composition will require. Today, the public wants safe foods, healthy foods, and flavorful foods. I well remember an Atlanta with maybe four grocery chains. Today, there are entire communities of different ethnicities with different demands as well as HUGE international megamarkets throughout the city with every conceivable fruit and vegetable shipped in from around the world. As has been very well observed here, and clearly indicated by the membership, people WILL pay more for quality and those other factors...or grow their own. IF the generic GREEN GIANTS continue to control a market with only a few varieties..varieties driven solely by resistance and ease of mass productivity.. the will lose that market. The days of only the Red and Yellow Delicious apples, pasty tomatoes, and dry/mealy/flavorless potatoes is history. Certain agricultural practices are now known for their overwhelmingly impact upon our soils and they are changing. For corporations to think that the public wants deadly poisons, strong antibiotics, or unnatural/dangerous genetic manipulation is insane. Fortunately there are forums such as this where folks can rediscover flavor, safety, and sensory appeal and breeders, such as yourself, who still value flavor. FOOD Inc was a real eye opener for me, partly because I DO remember when most homes had gardens and yardbirds. Ironically, that was also just after WWII, just as Ammonium Nitrate and draining the life out of America's farmland was on the rise. Now, thoughts such as using corn as fuel and what that portends for our soils just makes me cringe...almost as much as landfills. Bless you Tom for your values!

[Tom Wagner]

The lament in Europe during my talks there often brought up discussions about the dropping of old fashioned plant breeding education. So few plant breeders were like me, from the farm and seedsmen for generations. The necessity of registering seed varieties all but dried up backyard breeders since their varieties were deemed illegal. If you are not a registered seed grower you could not sell seeds, and the whole hierarchy of breeding and selling seeds fell apart from the standpoint of the non-professional.

I was reminded of the following link that I read years ago. It is still time appropriate today.

http://km.fao.org/gipb/images/pdf_fi..._DOC_apb09.pdf

Plant breeding is critical to the future of productive agriculture, food security, and economic
prosperity. Increasingly, many plant breeders are working in industry or governmental agencies
that do not include education of the next generation of plant breeders as part of their mission. At
the same time, many educational institutions lack resources and programs of sufficient size and
scope to adequately educate/expose students to applied plant breeding. Furthermore the
technology of plant breeding is changing, so established plant breeders need ongoing
opportunities to develop new skills to take advantage of the new tools such as genomics. Two
key questions facing our science are: 1. Do we have the capacity to educate the numbers of plant
breeders that will be needed in the future? and 2. Do we have the approaches to continue to
educate modern plant breeders in these changing times? Globally, in many developed and
developing countries, it appears that the answer to both questions is “no”

Tom Wagner

[mensplace]

Now THAT is scary, but it could happen here as the government is empowered by our ignorance and apathy. We have already seen what government sponsored programs can and have done to so many areas of agribusiness that have had huge impacts upon our health, our soils, and our ecosystem. Little things creep into our daily lives so that most haven't a clue what is happening or already has happened. Here, for example, I cannot have any of the yardbirds or animals that were once owned by most families, nor could I have any free-standing buildings. I am not aware of another family that has a vegetable garden. Looking through the once common skills of the Foxfire books, I would dare say that most Americans today would be in a world of hurt in a real crisis that cut the power, transportation, or communications as in the NC based book, One Second After. Maybe saving a few extra seeds of all kinds isn't such a bad idea.

[goodwin]

I'd imagine large commercial interests would like to put smaller breeders out of business. However, their particular business model is no longer viable when information and genetic stock is widely available - unless they get government protection. And I'd agree part of the problem is too few folks growing up on the land.
We ought to be able to model what we do on open source software, using some of the same general licenses to protect what we develop and share. That might turn the tide and make a real difference for our kids and grandkids.

[Tom Wagner]

We ought to be able to model what we do on open source software, using some of the same general licenses to protect what we develop and share. That might turn the tide and make a real difference for our kids and grandkids.

Thanks Goodwin, you are in fact a .....



Foreword to this advocacy:

I am not a computer person. However, as a plant breeder and finding myself outside the normal societal modes of endeavors in plant breeding (Tater Mater Seeds), it is obvious to me at this late date of my breeding research of potatoes and tomatoes that I will never fit neatly into the hierarchy of current economic activity. Occasionally, I hear from people well versed in computer geek language, that I have been misdirecting myself as a plant breeder and seedsman. All you have to do is listen to the anti-Monsanto, anti-Microsoft, anti-Big Business rhetoric and you come away with a consensus that Big is bad, Small is good. Being small is next to Spiritually Well Attuned. Many worry about seeds being approbated (“meaningful use”) by multi-national companies leaving the old fashioned “Burbank Breeder” with the virtual antonymic seeds. You may say that I only possess “meaningless use” varieties. Really?

Europe has some harsh laws on registering seed into approved lists. I am fighting those laws as an outlaw of sorts. It dawned on me that when some of my friends in Europe used free software and refused to pay into the strict regulations that monopolize computer use. Private conversations here in the Seattle area with likeminded friends made me think of using parallel technology to write about hybridizing one train of thought with another. Here is what I wrote earlier today.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Open Source Seeds: When Software and Seeds Find Partnerships

I am reminded of the terminology such as the three-word phrase "open source software" which describes the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues that may also surround the needs of a plant breeder and seedsman.
The open source model, as I understand it, includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of plant breeding such as those typically used in commercial companies. A possible main principle and practice of open source plant breeding development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product (seeds as source-material) available at little or no cost to the public. This is increasingly being applied in other fields of endeavor, such as biotechnology.
The proposed open source seed movement is a hybrid thought pressing toward the inspiration for increased transparency and liberty in the seed business and other fields, including the release of biotechnology research. As a projection, open source seed can be an expression where it simply means that a system is available to all who wish to work on it. The difference between crowdsourcing and open source is that open source production is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of the public. I am projecting a linkage system with other folks and their websites for this cooperative activity.

Some of you would agree that open source seeds have a public goods aspect to them. However, in my case, this suggests that the original work involves a great deal of time, money, and effort. There is no I can tell you how much money, time and effort I have put into plant breeding and the poor return for it financially, however the intrinsic value is enormous. The nice thing about OS is that the cost of reproducing the work is very low so that additional users may be added at zero or near zero cost - this is referred to as the rather low marginal cost of a product. At this point, the industry will say it is necessary to consider a copyright, a patent, or at least PVP (Plant Variety Protection). The idea of copyright for works of authorship and/or variety development is to protect the incentive of making these original works. Copyright restriction then creates access costs on consumers who value the original more than making an additional copy Thus; they will pay an access cost of this difference. Access costs also pose problems for authors who wish to create something based on another work yet are not willing to pay the copyright holder for the rights to the copyrighted work. The second type of cost incurred with a copyright system is the cost of administration and enforcement of the copyright (sorry, once again copyright may be construed or confused with patenting).

The idea of open source seed is then to eliminate the access costs of the consumer and the creator by reducing the restrictions of copyright (read plant patents). This will lead to creation of additional works (seeds), which build upon previous work and add to greater social benefit. Additionally, some folks may argue that open source also relieves society of the administration and enforcement costs of patenting. Organizations such as what I would like to formulate will have websites where individuals can file for alternative "licenses", or levels of restriction, for their works. These self-made protections free the general society of the costs of policing copyright (patent PVP) infringement. Thus, on several fronts, there is an efficiency argument to be made on behalf of open sourced seeds. I will be establishing protocols for my website that explain a motto of mine: My seeds are your seeds!

The genesis of this discourse is partly gathered from Wiki. Since my need to use alchemy to turning seeds into gold, my treatise is a mix of Wiki and wicked, thusly Wiked.

Tom Wagner (Tater Mater Seeds)

[mensplace]

Growing up in the fifties happiness was running through the woods where I had my magic fort
in an era when Atlanta WAS mostly old growth oaks. I was raised on the notion that we do the right things to get into college, to gain employment by a corporation, to buy the bigger and bigger house to provde fine clothes and fine cars so that your children too could have more and better and go to college to work for the corporation so that they could have the big homes and fine cars, and send their children to the fine college, ad nauseum. I well remember a debate in a marketing class re whether there IS such a thing as corporate responsibility when the ONLY role of a business was to maximize income for stockholders. Somehow, I have come a long, long way from any thoughts of being "happy" or running through the woods. Raised as a little Marine I later changed to a similar uniform that I wore for many years...IBM blue pinstripe...day after day, year after years. One day that disappeared overnight. For a year I wasn't afraid that I would die, but afraid that tomorrow would come and I would see the minutes pass day, after day, after day. One day, I remembered that I had once loved photography, so I picked up my old Nikormat for the first time in 30 years and rediscovered being happy. I then remembered that I had once loved writing. A month later I had written around 800 pages which become four books. Today, If growing tomatoes makes me happy, I do that. If I want to write, I do that. If I want to send more images to my agents, I do that. Along the way over the past ten years I have gotten calls from many others whose lives had ended due to one loss or another..the loss of a career, the loss of another, divorce, burning down their home, ...whatever. The seed I offer today is to find what makes you happy and in that will come the magic of rediscovering life and why you are here in the first place. In being there with others in times of tragedy and in times of great miracles I have seen death in every form, but have also seen countless lives changed. Today, my seeds too...are your seeds. Stuff, people, jobs, savings, and so much more disappear in the blink of an eye, but there are seeds of far greater value. Be Yourself. BE happy.

[casino]

mensplace, I enjoy all your posts. "Be yourself - be happy" your post inspired me. I printed it and I will file your comments to my favorites.

[mensplace]

Originally Posted by casino

mensplace, I enjoy all your posts. "Be yourself - be happy" your post inspired me. I printed it and I will file your comments to my favorites.

Thank you for such a kind comment!

After a lifetime of feeling driven to excel, provide, and be...according to everyone else's expectations..one night changed my life forever! That and many more experiences later became the basis for my four books.

If people are NOT happy ...there may be a reason.

As an ER chaplain, in corporate America, and in countless "chance" encounters, I have been repeatedly there as people's live were totally changed in the blink of an eye. My finding is that one must know who they are, what they love and do THAT at all costs. Beyond that...find faith. THAT is not preaching and has nothing to do with religion.

When those "red flags" go off inside you, they are there for a reason. Life and living can be truly beautiful, but it's up to you to constantly leave yourself open and positioned to see and fully experience that beauty. Be good to yourself, don't beat yourself up ..or ever allow others to. There will be hard times, but we are all in this together. Sometimes those hard times are doors opening. When you hear that inner voice..listen and discern. Celebrate the good!

Enjoy LOTS of mater samwiches and savor the moment!

[casino]

An ER chaplain...interresting lifes work. I can only image that you have enough life experience from the ER room that a patient, family or friends reveal their true nature to you in its pure form without hesitation. The good, bad and the ugly. I think your books would be very interresting reading. I am not ready to share this with the world yet but with you I am. On the 6th of January of this year I had a life changing experience from my living room couch. I am currently unemployed, and it seemed that everything in my life was slipping away like sand through my fingers. So I thought being unemployed I have some time to try this experiment and ballance my right and left brain. Maybe a ballanced brain can help me relax. Using a very unique machine in 5 days my brain was balanced and all the emotions that I had covered up, forgotten about or in denial came to the surface. When the flood gates opened I was sitting at home watching a DVD movie happy, happy and all of a sudden I had a panic attack so severe I thought I was going to die. I knew nothing about panic attacks so I thought I had food poisening and totally convinced myself that I had 5-6 minutes left to live. Panic for one hour and rest for one hour that repeated itself over and over again lasting 7 days. I took the Bach "Resque" flower remedy and that pulled me out of my crisis. Being broke and having a 5 thousand dollar deductable I tried every home remedy before actually commiting to going to the hospital, which I never did, but I did see my doctor (who was on vacation) a week later. That was the most horrific moment in my life but reflecting back on that time I never experienced such a pure thought that this is the end, good bye world. During my good moments I was on google and realized I had a panic attack. The more I tried to suppress my fear the worse it got. Then I tried this technique. When I felt the panic attack comming on I said out loud bring it on, bring it on, give it your best shot, and it never took hold, it went away. 2 months later after a much needed rest from this emotional roller coaster I feel darn good now, and I am looking my fear into its eyes. Scarry at first but it works. In your post talking about the red flags going off inside you, that inspired me to tell you this story. That was the hardest time in my life. All the doors opened up, all at once, too much too fast but reflecting back that was a very interresting experience, I will learn from it. Here is a quote and its from me, If you want lettuce you must plant lettuce seeds...Now. Wow, this was theraputic. I guess writing things down keeps the chatter off the brain and leave your troubles on paper. Spring is almost here and I am keeping my eye on my veggie garden. See Ya. Oh P.S. When praying for help, listen and keep your options open because answers come to you from everywhere. From a smack in the face answer, to a gentle whisper, of from a robin singing to the break of day.