'Goldmine' collection of wheat from 100 years ago may help feed the world

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/14/goldmine-collection-of-wheat-from-100-years-ago-may-help-feed-the-world-scientists-say

by akbarnama • 2 years ago

44 8 2 years ago

theguardian.com

486sx33• 2 years ago

I certainly feel like we need to use computing for some better things to benefit humanity

1. A long term human readable storage format that will stand the test of a 1000+ years.

2. A database system that works easily and well to catalog things like the DNA of every living plant and animal

A great mandate for the library of congress or the national archives

asalahli• 2 years ago

You might find this interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta

mistrial93• 2 years ago

oh of course - more GMO crops is the answer to the urgent crisis of industrial pollution. Write a heart-strings tug article and get it out now! (and call funders since the journalist is likely starving while next to a grocery store today)

throwaway3306a2• 2 years ago

Yes, optimization of the technology we use to produce food is exactly the answer.

mistrial93• 2 years ago

no, there is not a net shortage of food, system-wide. It is easy to spot a naive answer because the vast productivity of basic foodstuff is not widely known, nor intuitive.

mif• 2 years ago

Hold your horses. I think the title overstates the impact of those old wheat varieties. Yes, genetic diversity is high. But, the reason that today’s wheat is less diverse is only the side effect of one of the most astonishing feasts ever pulled off by a single human: Norman Borlaug. His breeding program in the 1940s was the start of the “Green Revolution“. He’s the guy who saved the billions from starvation.

For further reading about his story, I can highly recommend „The Wizard and the Prophet“ by Charles C. Mann [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34959327

'Goldmine' collection of wheat from 100 years ago may help feed the world

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