by Noel Kingsbury
Copyright © 2009 The University of Chicago Press
Published by The University of Chicago Press

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE – FROM THE BIRTH OF AGRICULTURE TO THE BIRTH OF GENETICS

0. INTRODUCTION
Meet the ancestors – wild crops
Nature and nurture – evolution, natural and human-directed
Thrust unwillingly to the stage - plant breeding enters politics
The story of plant breeding
Abbreviations

1. ORIGINS - The Domestication of Plants
‘A gathering we will go’ - from foraging to farming
Maize Mysteries
As the farmer drives the plough – evolution in early agriculture
Serendipity – inter-specific hybridisation
Planting cities and streets – domestication and civilisation

2.LANDRACES - Bedrock of Traditional Agriculture
Unique to time and place - landraces
Weaving a coat of many colours - the origins of diversity
Seed and spirit - diversity and landrace politics

3. ‘IMPROVEMENT’ - The Agricultural Revolution
A time of ferment – the age of multiple revolutions
From fodder to fruit – new crops and new markets
New rice, new methods - Song China’s ‘Green Revolution’
Hemmed between the mountains and the sea - Japan

4. VEGETABLE MULES - The beginnings of deliberate breeding
Floral facts of life – early knowledge about plants and sex
The professors - Kölreuter and other academic hybridists
Gentleman practitioners - Thomas Andrew Knight and others
Sex and the single strawberry
Sweet necessity – sugar cane and sugar beet
Moravia – land of progress
From the greenhouse to the pulpit – hybridisation and popular attitudes

5. EMPIRE – Globalisation in earnest
A universal garden – global exchanges of crops
From one hedgerow to many fields – finding and distributing new cereal varieties
Breeding a dynasty – the Vilmorin family
Onwards and upwards – the ‘German method’
Breeding a dynasty – the Vilmorin family
Onwards and upwards – the ‘German method’
Weaving the bread basket of the world
Poverty and the potato – a new crop is adapted slowly to a new home
Seeds of conflict - variety selection and imperial rule
Cotton, spinner of many troubles
An apple a day – the rise of the fruit industry
The strawberry – a soft and juicy story continues
Free for all – the arrival of the seed catalogue

6. BREAKTHROUGH – Gregor Mendel
Sowing the prairies and the plains - plant breeding in the late 19the century United States
Britons unbending - the 1899 conference and the introduction of Mendel
A new word for a new concept – ‘genetics’ and the 1902 and 1906 conferences
A profession at last – plant breeding in the US in the first decades of the 20th century
Light from the north – Scandinavian progress in crop genetics

7. GERMINATION – Mendelism and plant breeding in the early 20th century
Twilight of the gentleman amateur – Mendel in Britain
Slowly and unsteadily – Mendelian progress in Germany and France
Plant breeding in a packet – W.Atlee Burpee
The independent spirit lives on – potatoes
An unpleasant diversion - eugenics

8. LUTHER BURBANK – miracle-worker or charlatan?
The genepool as cornucopia – rise of a genetic wizard
A reputation impaled - on a spineless cactus

9. – ‘LET HISTORY JUDGE’ – plant breeding and politics in the USSR
Days of hope – Nikolai Vavilov
Days of delusion - Ivan Michurin and ‘Soviet Creative Darwinism’
Days of Madness – Trofim Lysenko and ‘Agrobiology’
Seed collecting at gunpoint – Nazi Germany and genetic resources

PART TWO - FLOWERING OF A TECHNOLOGY

10. HYBRID! – Corn and the brave new world of F1¬ hybridisation
Gift of the gods – corn
Shows, lab tests and beauty contests – just what makes good corn?
Too fantastic a concept? – the birth of hybrid corn
New crops, new business
The scientist as mystic? - the Barbara McClintock legend
”CRUNCH”, the irresistable savour of summer – sweet corn
Power politics, pesticides and obesity – the F1 corn story continues
A con-trick with corn? – a critical perspective on hybrid corn

11. CORNUCOPIA – genetics opens up the horn of plenty
Crossing the boundaries - the hybrid story continues
Casting the net ever wider – hybridising between species
In full flower – plant breeding as an applied science
Compounding the compounds – breeding for plant chemistry
The genetics of the roulette wheel – mutation breeding
Taking a gamble – mutation breeding
One set of chromosones good, two sets better - polyploidy
The juggernaut of progress rolls on – the gastronomic and social impacts of plant breeding
Cereal make-over – re-designing wheat
The grass keeps on getting greener – a short journey along the backroads
of breeding

12. GREEN REVOLUTION – can plant breeding feed the world?
The baleful eye – Thomas Malthus and food policy
Iowa farm boy makes good in Mexico – Norman Borlaug
A fantasy no more – India feeds itself
Food for half our race – boosting rice yields
New seeds, new hope, new problems – the Green Revolution’s first decade
Beyond yield - the revolution marches on
Not green and not a revolution? – critical voices
Malthus defied! - Conclusions

13. ORNAMENT – furnishing our gardens
The show’s the thing – the florists and their flowers
Tulip madness and the origins of capitalism
Passion and obsession - nurserymen breeders and gentleman amateurs
A rose is a rose is a rose – but the genes are never the same
A garden in a packet – the flower seed and bulb trade
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose - the 20th century’s endless search for novelty
The perfection of the unnatural – ornamental plant breeding as art and fashion

14. OWNERSHIP and DIVERSITY – issues of property rights over plant
genetic resources
Use it, save it or lose it! - genebanks
For the public good – plant breeding by the taxpayer
Who owns the seed owns the crop – private and corporate breeding
Keep off! Those seeds are mine! – the rise of patent protection
Helping hands or thieving hands? – patents, developing countries and the international agencies
Challenging the boundaries – participatory breeding
Respecting nature, but what is natural ?– the dilemmas of breeding for organic agriculture
Counting the cost of monopolies – some conclusions

15. CONCLUSIONS
The grand narrative – a summary of plant breeding history
Of empires and harvests – what drives plant breeding?
Henry Ford and the genetic bottleneck
Fundamental rupture or logical progression – GM crops and history
Attack of the literary locusts – the opponents of plant breeding
The future is creole

TECHNICAL NOTES