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Cross-pollination of thought
Mar. 7th, 2008 05:03 pmI've just eaten an orange. It was a seedless orange, sweet and convenient. That may sound unremarkable, but its very unremarkableness is what struck me about it.
I remember the first time I heard about seedless oranges, maybe 12 or 15 years ago. At the time they sounded strange and marvelous, a great triumph of agriculture and breeding. These days, they're so common that I'm a little surprised when I do find seeds in oranges.
It seems odd, when you think about it, that we've managed to breed a fruit with such a seemingly unadaptive trait as seedlessness. How are oranges grown, anyway? Seeing as my second year of biology in school was basically just botany, soil science, and general agricultural studies, you'd think they'd have taught me this, but no. Are oranges grafted, like apples or peaches? Or are they grown from seeds? The latter seems wholly incompatible with breeding seedless varieties. If it's grafted, then guess it can be kept up as long as enough trees are kept alive, spreading its genes laterally rather than through generations.
Even so, I wonder if they still need to be pollinated every year. Because if so, they're fucked, just like the rest of agriculture. Yes, most crops are royally fucked. Why? Because the honeybees are dying. THE BEES ARE DYING. If they can't be saved, it is the end of civilisation as we know it.
I remember the first time I heard about seedless oranges, maybe 12 or 15 years ago. At the time they sounded strange and marvelous, a great triumph of agriculture and breeding. These days, they're so common that I'm a little surprised when I do find seeds in oranges.
It seems odd, when you think about it, that we've managed to breed a fruit with such a seemingly unadaptive trait as seedlessness. How are oranges grown, anyway? Seeing as my second year of biology in school was basically just botany, soil science, and general agricultural studies, you'd think they'd have taught me this, but no. Are oranges grafted, like apples or peaches? Or are they grown from seeds? The latter seems wholly incompatible with breeding seedless varieties. If it's grafted, then guess it can be kept up as long as enough trees are kept alive, spreading its genes laterally rather than through generations.
Even so, I wonder if they still need to be pollinated every year. Because if so, they're fucked, just like the rest of agriculture. Yes, most crops are royally fucked. Why? Because the honeybees are dying. THE BEES ARE DYING. If they can't be saved, it is the end of civilisation as we know it.
