Monsanto makes highly hybridized seeds available to home gardeners

lol, not a pr stunt at all right?
 
i just googled the organizations name.
 


consistently taken fringe and anti-science positions when it comes to public health and the environment, have an unusually close relationship with certain organic food companies, and often engage in false — sometimes outlandish — accusations of their opponents.  This type of behavior calls for some skepticism regarding their progressive credentials and activism.
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http://www.biofortified.org/2013/05/the-organic-consumer-association-progressive-activists-or-organic-astroturf/
 
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Organic_Consumers_Association
 
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/organic-consumers-association-2/
 
they are basically just an activist organization with a veneer of consumer protection advocacy.
 
it actually looks like they started out as a decent organization but took some bazaar pseudoscience  turn some where.
 
good thing the hague is not busy with real work.
and wtf is an oil based fertilizer?
 
this writer hasnt a clue.
 
if anything these fertilizers are coal or natural gas or nuclear 'based' in that they requiire lots of electricity and heat to produce and refine...
 
queequeg152 said:
lol, not a pr stunt at all right?
 
i just googled the organizations name.
 
 
 
 
http://www.biofortified.org/2013/05/the-organic-consumer-association-progressive-activists-or-organic-astroturf/
 
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Organic_Consumers_Association
 
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/organic-consumers-association-2/
 
they are basically just an activist organization with a veneer of consumer protection advocacy.
 
it actually looks like they started out as a decent organization but took some bazaar pseudoscience  turn some where.
 
good thing the hague is not busy with real work.

and wtf is an oil based fertilizer?
 
this writer hasnt a clue.
 
if anything these fertilizers are coal or natural gas or nuclear 'based' in that they requiire lots of electricity and heat to produce and refine...
Click to expand...
 
I'm tending towards pro-GMO, anti-Monsanto ...
 
Have you read about the banana issue? ...
 
might lose the whole world crop to some fungus issue within the next 3x generations ...
 
almost happened 20 yrs ago ... and we've been having an inferior banana ever since (because the better variants were susceptible) ...
 
they are going to have to either come up w/ a GMO one at breakneck speed, or commercially-grown bananas might literally be done for (for now, anyways) ...
http://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-confirms-that-bananas-are-being-driven-to-extinction
 
grantmichaels said:
might lose the whole world crop to some fungus issue within the next 3x generations ...
 
almost happened 20 yrs ago ... and we've been having an inferior banana ever since (because the better variants were susceptible) ...
 
they are going to have to either come up w/ a GMO one at breakneck speed, or commercially-grown bananas might literally be done for (for now, anyways) ...

http://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-confirms-that-bananas-are-being-driven-to-extinction
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it takes like a decade to make a gmo cultivar and get it approved... i seriously doubt one is coming anytime soon unless someone started years ago.
 
the citrus problem in flordia is being worked on with a gmo cultivar at this moment... but its still years and years off.
 
im betting the bannana folks can do a bit of what the citrus folks are doing... managing the disease and making the most of what they can from the infected plants.  but ill have to read about it.
 
I keep real abreast of the citrus GMO research and I'm really hopeful for it. It's for spinach genes in the rootstock cultivars, should be a good solution, at least for the time being. For most trees, they'll have to be replanted but it is better than no citrus. I'll plant one as soon as they're available for consumers. HLB isn't in my state yet but it is coming. My lime trees might make it but my oranges and other trees won't. I'd hate to see that GMO banned, it won't spread since it is root stock and shouldn't be allergenic. It's our best bet.

The banana problem is "Panama disease"--fusarium strain that kills Cavendish banana varietals. A similar strain is killing date palms. One area of my garden soil is infected with it (neighbors just lost a date palm that had roots in my garden) but it doesn't seem to be infecting my solanum crops in that area. It's pretty serious, took down a huge palm in a matter of months. Panama Disease is a fight we're losing, I haven't heard of a successful GMO for it yet. There are some banana cultivars that are immune, I try to buy them all the time to reinforce that there's market demand for more than Cavendish.
 
its a shame to hear erin brockovich falling into the pseudoscience rat hole... she did real work back in the day. groundwater pollution etc. 
 
MarianneW said:
I keep real abreast of the citrus GMO research and I'm really hopeful for it. It's for spinach genes in the rootstock cultivars, should be a good solution, at least for the time being. For most trees, they'll have to be replanted but it is better than no citrus. I'll plant one as soon as they're available for consumers. HLB isn't in my state yet but it is coming. My lime trees might make it but my oranges and other trees won't. I'd hate to see that GMO banned, it won't spread since it is root stock and shouldn't be allergenic. It's our best bet.

The banana problem is "Panama disease"--fusarium strain that kills Cavendish banana varietals. A similar strain is killing date palms. One area of my garden soil is infected with it (neighbors just lost a date palm that had roots in my garden) but it doesn't seem to be infecting my solanum crops in that area. It's pretty serious, took down a huge palm in a matter of months. Panama Disease is a fight we're losing, I haven't heard of a successful GMO for it yet. There are some banana cultivars that are immune, I try to buy them all the time to reinforce that there's market demand for more than Cavendish.
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are grapefruit suceptable to the greening disease?
 
been eating quite alot of them recently.
 
Yes. All citrus & citrus relatives. Some lime seems to be more immune than most but they're all susceptible. Includes yuzu, calimodin, buddha's hand, all grapefruits, citron, etc... HLB is awful and after a tree is infected, it contaminates the soil for years, so even if the infected tree is ripped out and burned, you cannot replant with a new tree. There's little in the way of pesticide to ward it off, too.
 
Some but not all. But they all can be. For instance, I've got a grapefruit on its own roots, but I could cut off a chunk and graft it onto a set of roots. Or, I could "bud out" and in the spot I cut a chunk off, graft on a branch from a different citrus (how you get citrus cocktail trees). And, in all of those situations, the plant would be fine. So, they need not be grafted but they all can be.
 
pretty much all fruiting tree agriculture(wtf is that actually called?) uses grafting to increase resistance to diseases and promote vigor.
 
maby marianne can elaborate, but i think apples and junk are triploids, meaning they cannot be propagated reliably by seed. even with breeding and slection of traits.
pretty much all apple trees are clones from a single or few particularly good trees out of thousands grown in some exploratory orchard somewhere. 
 
no clue if oranges are triploids, but im pretty sure most commercial producton uses grafting.
 
was reading about this monsanto trial this evening... i had assumed the "trial" was really some pre trial hearing or what ever the international court equivelant is... but its not even that. its just a fake trial funded by crowdsourced money.
 
i guess they got money from a gofundme campaign or something. 
 
wtf?
 
Weed said:
I was more interested in the prevailing industry standard.
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What I described is the industry standard. It's a mix. Keep in mind that in the US, there's almost as many trees in the hands of hobby growers like me as there is in the hands of commercial growers.

Citrus can reliably be grown from seed. Obviously, the seeds of a plant on a GMO rootstock are not GMO. Grafting is used for a number of reasons. Time to fruit is faster. Grafting allows for a specific fruit to be subject to other traits from the rootstock, like vigor or dwarfing. For instance, Flying Dragon is a virgorous dwarfing rootstock.

Many apple trees are grafts but they need not be. I think most are grafts to allow for faster time to fruiting and reliability of the variety. Growing from seed invites variability in quality of fruit. I think some of the varieties commonly grown are F1 so the easiest way to propagate them are through grafting.
 
Genetic information migrates from plant to plant
 
Date: February 1, 2012
 
Source: Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology
 
Summary: To generate phylogenetic trees and investigate relationships between organisms, scientists usually look for similarities and differences in the DNA. Plant scientists were confounded by the fact that the DNA extracted from the plants’ green chloroplasts sometimes showed the greatest similarities when related species grew in the same area. Scientists have now discovered that a transfer of entire chloroplasts, or at least their genomes, can occur in contact zones between plants. Inter-species crossing is not necessary. The new chloroplast genome can even be handed down to the next generation and, thereby, give a plant with new traits. These findings are of great importance to the understanding of evolution as well as the breeding of new plant varieties.

Puts a new spin on the whole the DNA wont make it to the seed idea doesnt it?
 
Not like some retrovirus couldnt do it anyway.
 
Quee, Erin dint say anything pseudosciency. Didnt even read the article did you?

Gene Transfer Between Species Is Surprisingly Common
 
Date: March 11, 2007
 
Source: University of California - Berkeley Summary: Bacteria are known to share genes, spreading drug resistance, for example. But how common is it in other organisms, including mammals like us? Two new studies show that most bacteria have genes or large groups of genes shared by other bacteria. Even among higher organisms, shared genes are the rule rather than the exception, UC Berkeley and LBNL researchers say.
 
Two new studies by University of California, Berkeley, scientists highlight the amazing promiscuity of genes, which appear to shuttle frequently between organisms, especially more primitive organisms, and often in packs.
 
Such gene flow, dubbed horizontal gene transfer, has been seen frequently in bacteria, allowing pathogenic bacteria, for example, to share genes conferring resistance to a drug. Recently, two different species of plants were shown to share genes as well. The questions have been: How common is it, and how does it occur?
 
In a report appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) researchers analyzed more than 8,000 different families of genes coding for proteins - families that represent the millions of proteins in all living creatures - to assess the prevalence of horizontal gene transfer.
They found that more than half of all the most primitive organisms, Archaea, have one or more protein genes acquired by horizontal gene transfer, as compared to 30 to 50 percent of bacteria that have acquired genes this way. Fewer than 10 percent of eukaryotes - plants and animals - have genes acquired via horizontal gene transfer.
 
Scientists uncover transfer of genetic material between blood-sucking insect and mammals
 
Date: April 30, 2010
 
Source: University of Texas at Arlington
 
Summary: Researchers have found the first solid evidence of horizontal DNA transfer, the movement of genetic material among non-mating species, between parasitic invertebrates and some of their vertebrate hosts.
 
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