Comment by benjiro29
12 hours ago
Height is a solvable problem today. Chemical growth regulators
Or you do what Claudio Grossi did, and you mix the ancient grain with short growing grains that add stability. Sometimes the solution is simpler then just throwing chemicals at the problem.
This is a great practical approach, but when you harvest the crop you get a mix of higher crop and lower crop. It is more difficult to sell some mix than a pure crop with known properties. Technically, it would be possible to build a harvester with two cutters at different heights to separate the crops, but I've never seen one.
You forgot about the height. It will overshadow the smaller crop, and lack of sunlight on this smaller crop may simply not produce any ears as a result. Just a "balcony farmer" but that is what i have seen with most plants that are overshadowed by dense/taller plants.
A good story that touches on this is the Wizard and the Prophet, covering Norman Borlaug's efforts to crossbreed wheat that wasn't too tall, was resistant to blight, etc.
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That’s true in generation 1, but breeding isn’t a single generation. You repeat things across generations until you find a stable mix.
You just raise the head.
You harvest the top crop, the one you want, cutting above the lower height, then go back through and make a second pass with the head lower.
You'll lose some of the lower crop, crushed under the wheels, but it was there as bonus anyway.
It seems like the genes that cause long stalks also have other benefits, otherwise they'd have been bred out a long time ago. At least that is what I figure.
Short grains are modern;
- allow modern machines to harvest it more easily
- move slighly more of the plants energy into the seed
- prevent wind damage. (small farms bordered with trees was more typical historically)
On the historical side;
- The long stalks allow the crop to be bundled and dried without the seed touching the ground.
- It makes the stalks themselves useful as a building material in walls, roofs, isolation, bedding.
- It makes for a good grip as the seeds are pulled form the stalks with an historical thresher.
In short, we didn't start breeding grains to be short until modern post industrial farming techniques. Short grain does provide better yield on industrial mono-crop farming. But would have been seen as worse historically.
Problem with modern grains 1) gluten 2) weed killers/ pesticides 3) lack of nutritional value
My father and many other people in my family increased to neutral millets and started giving up wheat as much as they can.
Those problems are worth solving for or roll back to grossini seeds and use his creative technique to not let it withered by wind and let’s you have better nutritional value
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Lodging is still a big problem even with modern varieties and growth regulators and even pre-modern wheat plants were probably shorter than they were originally.
They confer advantage over many weeds according to the article.