Biological diversity
Sir—On August 27 Eric Bennett expressed a common opinion that plant breeding harms conservation. In fact, it probably helps it. Farmers grow new cultivars because they are better, not because of some multi-national plot. Good old cultivars persist. The Granny Smith apple is 100 years old. In the Netherlands, the home of Royal Dutch Shell, the potato industry is based on the cultivar Bintje, which was bred early this century. Since 1950 grain production in the United States has doubled while 10 million hectares of crop land have been diverted to conservation. Plant breeding has given half this increase in productivity, and is the least polluting of the inputs to increased production. If the same benefits of science, plant breeding included, could be applied in all the Third World countries, as is being done in Turkey and India for instance, this would benefit conservation world-wide, not hinder it. — Yours, etc.,
T. P. PALMER. August 30, 1986.
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Press, 3 September 1986, Page 16
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158Biological diversity Press, 3 September 1986, Page 16
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