Coyote Blog

This is pretty cool, from Charles C. Mann’s new book, and quoted by Marginal Revolution:

…the modern species [of maize] had to have been consciously developed by a
small group of breeders who hunted through teosinte strands for plants with
desired traits.  Geneticists from Rutgers University…estimated in 1998 that
determined, aggressive, plan breeders — which Indians certainly were — might
have been able to breed maize in as little as a decade…modern maize was the
outcome of a bold act of conscious biological manipulation — "arguably man’s
first, and perhaps his greatest, feat of genetic engineering," [Nina
Federoff]…"To get corn out of teosinte is so — you couldn’t get a grant to do
that now, because it would sound so crazy…Somebody who did that today would
get a Nobel Prize!  If their lab didn’t get shut down by Greenpeace, I mean."