by ILoveTTATT2 14 Replies latest jw friends
I am learning a lot Talesin!
Turns out that there is sexual and asexual reproduction in plants, but also there is self-pollination and cross-pollination.
Both corn and wheat have sexual reproduction.
Corn needs cross-pollination. Wheat self-pollinates, in general.
This means that wheat will retain qualities for longer than corn, but it could lose them.
From memory (and this is a long time ago) my father would use bags of wheat from the previous season to plant a crop. Same with barley. I am not 100% sure of that though! and he is long since deceased, so I can't ask him.
I know there are plenty of plants you can't just replant the seeds and get the same crop, and it seems corn is an example. (Although the corn variety used 110 years ago probably wasn't a hybrid.)
The following is from the website of one of the 2 biggest suppliers to the agricultural market in Australia. It does suggest that some farmers at least do just use wheat from the previous season.
Hi elderNewton, I think you are referring to GM canola. I don't think Monsanto (or anyone else) sells GM wheat, or any other licensed wheat variety, but I could be wrong.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4011e/y4011e0v.htm
Quite an "obscure" topic but the internet is amazing!!
Essentially, if there is a new type, it MUST be bred PRECISELY to insure that a certain characteristic stays. Wheat plants are NOT clones (unlike what I thought), so they CAN lose "vitality" if they are not carefully raised in a certain fashion for various generations.
I have learnt quite a lot about wheat recently and noe have a much clearer idea of what REALLY happened with the Miracle Wheat scenario.
