3/25/12 (Sunday)
I just finished reading the chapter 1 of “The Botany of Desire” – Desire: Sweetness/Plant: The Apple. In addition to what I have previously written about this chapter, I learned a few more things about this chapter:
1. There are vast genetic resources in apple species, but most of them (about 90%) are lost in the cultivated apple varieties due to the artificial selection of “desirable traits” such as sweetness, redness, largeness, roundness, et al. Selection for other traits, such as disease resistance and hardiness, are often neglected. So now we have to rely heavily on pesticides and insecticides to control the diseases in an apple orchard. It has become increasingly imperative to develop disease-resistant apple varieties due to the environmental concerns. In order to find the disease resistant genes in apple species, we need to preserve the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan, only where a genetic diversity can be found.
2. When the early settlers came to America. They had to conquer the Native Americans using rifles and knives; they had to tame the nature using axes and saws. But they did not realize that they also transformed the ecosystems of America; they deliberately introduced new crops into the New World, such as potato, apple, et al; they also brought many other species into the New World unintentionally. Some of them might have been brought here by the seeds stuck in the shoes, clothes, and other belongings of the settlers, other might have come along with horses, dogs, or other animals. A lot of these exotic species thrived in the New World and made it their home.
