4 ms·

Much of the genetic diversity of our food supply is threatened today. Whether it's the strain of yeast needed to make cheese, or a variety of bean no longer gr

Much of the genetic diversity of our food supply is threatened today. Whether it's the strain of yeast needed to make cheese, or a variety of bean no longer grown commercially. We are probably unable to recreate crops from wild genetics at this point. Every variety we lose is gone forever. Domesticated food animals are facing the same fate. I don't think we could recreate the domesticated sheep from the wild at this point. We're only a couple generations from a real crisis at this point, and in many areas, the crisis is already here.

bserge 6y ago
Kind of, maybe. Domesticated animals are still in the wild in many places, so if there was any desire to "start from scratch", so to say, it can be done. This reminded me of some places with high boar populations, you can hunt them anytime since they're overrunning the ecosystem basically. Yet people don't like their meat because it's "too gamey", whatever that means. There's also the oily fish species that everyone seems to hate but they actually taste good and are nutritious. Point is, the reason for the lack genetic diversity in food supply is people - they simply don't want diversity. We've found the best tasting or more versatile food and everyone's going with that. I have no doubt that diets will adapt if some crops or animals completely disappear somehow. Diversity of overall flora and Fauna is indeed screwed. So many species are near extinct already and few care.
barry-cotter 6y ago
> We are probably unable to recreate crops from wild genetics at this point. Every variety we lose is gone forever. Domesticated food animals are facing the same fate. I don't think we could recreate the domesticated sheep from the wild at this point. Unless the wild forebear is extinct it is exceedingly unlikely we’d be unable to recreate crops from wild genetics. It wouldn’t be worthwhile; even pre selective breeding domesticates are very different from wild stock and we’d be better off starting from literally any domesticate than wild stock for almost all crops but we could. Selective breeding is very well understood technology. For most purposes if you wanted to recreate a particular strain that existed in the past you’d cross multiple wild types with multiple domesticates so you start off with all the traits you want in say 32 plants, the second generation 16, and so on until they’re all in 1 plant. This both overstates and understates the difficultly; overstates because you’re not going to start with 32 traits, understates because traits aren’t on/off, they’re on a continuum. But fundamentally this is a problem of money and time, an engineering one, not a basic science one. If you look at the Wikipedia page for aurochs there are currently seven projects attempting to back breed them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs Or look at the effort to bring back the American Chestnut. It’ll happen within my lifetime. https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2flifestyle%2fhome%2ftwo-plans-to-bring-back-the-american-chestnut--one-by-hybridization-one-by-genetic-engineering%2f2019%2f12%2f17%2f8fc28ff4-16c7-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html%3foutputType%3damp&outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%...

bserge 6y ago

Kind of, maybe. Domesticated animals are still in the wild in many places, so if there was any desire to "start from scratch", so to say, it can be done. This reminded me of some places with high boar populations, you can hunt them anytime since they're overrunning the ecosystem basically. Yet people don't like their meat because it's "too gamey", whatever that means. There's also the oily fish species that everyone seems to hate but they actually taste good and are nutritious. Point is, the reason for the lack genetic diversity in food supply is people - they simply don't want diversity. We've found the best tasting or more versatile food and everyone's going with that. I have no doubt that diets will adapt if some crops or animals completely disappear somehow. Diversity of overall flora and Fauna is indeed screwed. So many species are near extinct already and few care.

barry-cotter 6y ago

> We are probably unable to recreate crops from wild genetics at this point. Every variety we lose is gone forever. Domesticated food animals are facing the same fate. I don't think we could recreate the domesticated sheep from the wild at this point. Unless the wild forebear is extinct it is exceedingly unlikely we’d be unable to recreate crops from wild genetics. It wouldn’t be worthwhile; even pre selective breeding domesticates are very different from wild stock and we’d be better off starting from literally any domesticate than wild stock for almost all crops but we could. Selective breeding is very well understood technology. For most purposes if you wanted to recreate a particular strain that existed in the past you’d cross multiple wild types with multiple domesticates so you start off with all the traits you want in say 32 plants, the second generation 16, and so on until they’re all in 1 plant. This both overstates and understates the difficultly; overstates because you’re not going to start with 32 traits, understates because traits aren’t on/off, they’re on a continuum. But fundamentally this is a problem of money and time, an engineering one, not a basic science one. If you look at the Wikipedia page for aurochs there are currently seven projects attempting to back breed them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs Or look at the effort to bring back the American Chestnut. It’ll happen within my lifetime. https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2flifestyle%2fhome%2ftwo-plans-to-bring-back-the-american-chestnut--one-by-hybridization-one-by-genetic-engineering%2f2019%2f12%2f17%2f8fc28ff4-16c7-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html%3foutputType%3damp&outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%...