ABSTRACT

The Industrial Revolution led to replacing peasant mass selection by individual selection. In 1836 John Le Couteur on the suggestion of the Spanish botanist Mariano LaGasca codified the isolation method, empirically practiced since the early 19^th century. It consists in replacing varieties or populations by “copies” of a better plant – by a (quasi) clone. It requires plants that “breed true to type,” namely that are individually reproducible as is the case for small grain cereals. It exploits the natural variation of populations. George Shull’s “hybrid corn” extended the isolation method to maize thus exploiting the natural variation of maize population but took great care to hide it behind genetic considerations on the exploitation of the elusive heterosis. To anyone focusing on what breeders do, this sleight of hand would have been clear as early as January 1909, when Shull detailed the breeder’s task: building a random sample population of individually reproducible plants (reproducible by the breeder and only the breeder) by “making all possible crosses among different pure strains” obtained by “as many self-fertilization as practicable.” Although only a marginal and unique genetic yield increase could be expected from such an extravagant proposal, it solved the overdominant problems of an industrial agriculture, crop uniformity and breeders’ property rights. Shull was clear about his goals, but these crucial aspects were ignored while all attention went to the non-existent yield increase of the exploitation of heterosis.

摘要

工业革命导致个人选择取代了农民的大众选择。1836 年，John Le Couteur 在西班牙植物学家 Mariano LaGasca 的建议下编纂了隔离方法，自 19 世纪初以来一直在^实践。它包括用更好植物的“复制品”——（准）克隆——替代品种或种群。它需要“按类型繁殖”的植物，即像小粒谷物那样可单独繁殖。它利用人口的自然变化。George Shull 的“杂交玉米”将分离方法扩展到玉米，从而利用了自然变异玉米种群，但非常小心地将其隐藏在利用难以捉摸的杂种优势的遗传考虑之后。对于任何关注育种者所做的事情的人来说，这种花招早在 1909 年 1 月就已经很清楚了，当时舒尔详细说明了育种者的任务：建立一个可单独复制的植物的随机样本种群（可由育种者且仅由育种者复制）通过“尽可能多的自我受精”获得“在不同的纯品系之间进行所有可能的杂交”。尽管从这种奢侈的提议中只能预期遗传产量的边际和独特的增加，但它解决了工业化农业、作物均匀性和育种者财产权的过度支配问题。舒尔很清楚他的目标，但这些关键方面被忽略了，而所有的注意力都集中在利用杂种优势带来的不存在的产量增加上。