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Hybrid The History & Science Of Plant Breeding
Paperback Edition: 1
Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-packed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succulent red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange carrots pulled from loamy brown soil, swirling heads of green lettuce
basking in the sun. With "Hybrid", Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Drawing on historical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs.
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Featured in the November 2011 Creative Enterprises newsletter.
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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Publication date : 2011-08-01
Subjects: Non-fiction, Science And Technology, Biology, Botany & Plant Sciences, Cellular Biology (cytology)