Breeding techniques

[jim dankness]

he was a darwinist, but believed in "the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics"

pretty sure he rejected mendels theory on genes!.

I'm assuming you are both speaking of Burbank..?

from "Hybrid", Noel Kingsbury (2009, University of Chicago Press), Chapter 8 ('Luther Burbank'), p.193:

A lack of patience with the theories of others extended to a complete distrust of Mendel's work, and despite his early reading of Darwin, he appeared to believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

 

[Unclepeter]

I'm assuming you are both speaking of Burbank..?

from "Hybrid", Noel Kingsbury (2009, University of Chicago Press), Chapter 8 ('Luther Burbank'), p.193:

thx for the info... nice book too by the looks of it.

Edit:yes Burbank.

 

[jim dankness]

nice book too by the looks of it.

It is a fascinating book, and highly recommended to all members here interested in an easy to read (but not quite 'pop sci') history of plant breeding.

 

[joshuahazen]

i don't agree about what your saying in regard to dog's josh. i have kept working dogs most my life i know men who have had fighting dog as well. well to get what i am saying across i have a jack russell terrier now. when he was younger he would come lamping with me and the lurchers. when the lurchers where lame i would take him and he would catch rabbits causing just as the lurcher would just not as Meany. the reason he wasn't as good was just because of his body's shape and size. i know a mate who used a yorkshire terrier for fox digging something they where never breed for being small vermin dog rats and nice before becoming a lap dog. i have also seen lurchers with no collie blood used to herd sheep. terriers used to retrieve to guns like spaniels would. mongrels used as fighting dogs with no bull blood in them. i think first its because of how they were brought up then the size and shape of the dog that make it better at a job then others. but ime no breeds really more able to work better than another in a way other then because of its physical attributes. just ask my little jack mate he's a real tryer and that's because of the other dogs he's been around doing there jobs more then his parents. he thinks he's a spaniel a bull breed and a sight hound and terrier all in one. and he dose the bob as good as a well trained dog of any off these breeds if the lurcher wasn't genetically faster ect.

I am referring to more specific traits, like a pointers tendency to point and a retreivers tendancy to retrieve.

or the way an austrailian shepherd will have tendency herd animals even though it has never been trained to do so. Anyway its an observation I have made, I don't put that much credence into it. It just seems that some of these breed specific traits are so specified, and the actions they produce one would tend to think would be learned, but in many cases they aren't, they are inherited.
Its bizarre.

I mean you can train a dog to do many things, that is not what I am referring to, it is what the dogs of breed tend to do that have never been trained that is bizarre

 

[blackberry]

I am referring to more specific traits, like a pointers tendency to point and a retreivers tendancy to retrieve.

or the way an austrailian shepherd will have tendency herd animals even though it has never been trained to do so. Anyway its an observation I have made, I don't put that much credence into it. It just seems that some of these breed specific traits are so specified, and the actions they produce one would tend to think would be learned, but in many cases they aren't, they are inherited.
Its bizarre.

I mean you can train a dog to do many things, that is not what I am referring to, it is what the dogs of breed tend to do that have never been trained that is bizarre

well if you think about birds nests and songs or insects behavior you will see that actions could just be breed to, like body characteristics.
actually if you think deeper, humans tend to have same behavior to the same condition so this is probably genetic too.

 

[GreenintheThumb]

I do it because i experiment with my hobby. If its the same recommendation that you made on icmag then you will understand my point. What they know now about gene expression is alot different to what they knew. Watch the link of a lecture i put up and tell me the impossability of it all and why cannabis is different?

I didn't say epigenetic effects aren't seen in cannabis. They're everywhere. There's been zero studies about cannabis specifically tho.

Is cannabis a very adaptable plant if so would it acclimatise if put in a different country from its origin. Could it acclimatise even better if put through stresses in that enviroment of course it has to adapt or die!!

I don't see the value in purposefully stressing my plants, unless I'm testing their likelihood of intersex.

plasticity=



"the capacity of organisms with the same genotype to vary in developmental pattern, in phenotype, or in behavior according to varying environmental conditions"


I honestly cant see why you think that the above cant happen

I said nothing of the sort. Of course the above happens. Ever take a well proven indoor cutting for a season outdoors? GASP it doesn't look exactly the same way. All growers know this stuff. What was interesting and surprising about epigenetics is that some of these effects are passed to the offspring. For a few generations before they wash out. So don't stress your mom when she's full of seed because it COULD effect the progeny.

If nevil was correct in saying jack herer and diesel and ssh are all the same coming from a man who knows genetics and breeding inside out. If its true there is phenotypic plasticity at its best!

Hahahah, I guess it wasn't so placid for Nevil to see through it. But get real, anyone who's grown the three knows diesel isn't ssh. I don't doubt JH and SSH's relation tho. And maybe Nevil meant NYCD instead of Sour D. I never saw many Diesel traits in Soma's NYCD. But who knows...

The enviroment determines what we are and will be not the other way about FACT!

Grow some hemp and turn it into SSH with your environment. Won't happen.

Thats why we are all neanderthal still to this day NOT! Why are we different if same genotype obviously because of our enviroment (THE GREAT CHANGER OF GENES)

Neanderthal is certainly a different genotype than us. Some classify if as a subspecies and others classify them as a separate human species altogether. Funny that we did coexist in the same environment tho.

I look after my mom and shes not seeded i state mom not plural because i like working an observing with 1 family at a time. I wouldnt put a seeded mom in the shade or let her go hungry. I know its ONLY SEEDS as you state but thats where it all starts seeded mom taken care of and nurtured!

Okay. My point was that epigenetic effects can be transferred to the progeny. It's what was so interesting about the phenomena. Everyone is already aware of phenotypic plasticity.

ITS AMAZING THAT MY BLUEBERRY MOM( TASTES EXATLY LIKE CHOCOLATE THAI)AND IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM HER UK BLUES(WITHOUT THE ACETONE) TASTING DAUGHTER.

Yeah, and the reason is because they are different genotypes. They're different selections. It's not that the europe environment ruined and changed the line. It was shitty breeding by know nothings. Plain and simple. If this was an epigenetic effect it would wash out over time.

Do you get a good phenos or genos from your plants and or both
i got a gd phenotype from that genotype thank you enviroment!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How do you get a good phenotype out of a piss poor genotype is my question.

 

[oscar the rotund]

One thing Burbank talks about a lot is the acquired millions of years of genetics a plant has in it's genome. Seems that getting wildly different plants, including potency, comes best from breeding plants from vastly different locations with the attributes you want and choosing the offspring carefully. Hmmm... Haze? I'm on book 4 now in the series. I think couple of reasons he was so successful was one he had a great eye for selection and two he grew vast quantities of anything he worked with. Bonsai breeding anyone?

 

[GUANOIZDASHIZNIT]

I didn't say epigenetic effects aren't seen in cannabis. They're everywhere. There's been zero studies about cannabis specifically tho.





I don't see the value in purposefully stressing my plants, unless I'm testing their likelihood of intersex.




I said nothing of the sort. Of course the above happens. Ever take a well proven indoor cutting for a season outdoors? GASP it doesn't look exactly the same way. All growers know this stuff. What was interesting and surprising about epigenetics is that some of these effects are passed to the offspring. For a few generations before they wash out. So don't stress your mom when she's full of seed because it COULD effect the progeny.




Hahahah, I guess it wasn't so placid for Nevil to see through it. But get real, anyone who's grown the three knows diesel isn't ssh. I don't doubt JH and SSH's relation tho. And maybe Nevil meant NYCD instead of Sour D. I never saw many Diesel traits in Soma's NYCD. But who knows...




Grow some hemp and turn it into SSH with your environment. Won't happen.



Neanderthal is certainly a different genotype than us. Some classify if as a subspecies and others classify them as a separate human species altogether. Funny that we did coexist in the same environment tho.



Okay. My point was that epigenetic effects can be transferred to the progeny. It's what was so interesting about the phenomena. Everyone is already aware of phenotypic plasticity.



Yeah, and the reason is because they are different genotypes. They're different selections. It's not that the europe environment ruined and changed the line. It was shitty breeding by know nothings. Plain and simple. If this was an epigenetic effect it would wash out over time.



How do you get a good phenotype out of a piss poor genotype is my question.

I did take you out of context maybe i shouldn`t have used the word epigenetic.

I dont know why my cutting went the way it did but it was what i was wanting.

I have flowered the mom out and it tasted like chocolate thai.

I took 2 cuts off the flowered cutting that changed so will just have to wait n see if it stays that way

I dont know if this is a trait brought on by enviromental factors or genetical or epigenetical

We all know how much our enviroment determines how genes express themselves. Me and my m8s run the same strains all the time and not 1 bud looks or tastes the same i say its our own enviromental stamp.

People can tell whose enviro it came out of no matter what srain

Here is a good read

Evolutionary Significance of Phenotypic Plasticity in Plants

 

[GUANOIZDASHIZNIT]

A somatic epitype is a non-heritable epigenetic alteration in a gene. It is similar to conventional epigenetics in that it does not involve changes in the DNA primary sequence. Physically, the somatic epitype corresponds to changes in DNA methylation, oxidative damage (replacement of GTP with oxo-8-dGTP), or changes in DNA-chromatin structure that are not reversed by normal cellular or nuclear repair mechanisms. Somatic epitypes alter gene expression levels without altering the amino acid sequence of the expressed protein. Current research suggests that somatic epitypes can be altered both before and after birth, and this alteration can be in response to exposure to heavy metals (such as lead), differences in maternal care, or nutritional or behavioral stress. There is no indication that somatic epitypes are heritable in a conventional epigenetic fashion. Some research suggests that methylation levels (and gene expression) can be reversed for some somatic epitypes by alterations in environmental factors such as diet.d

 

[GreenintheThumb]

I wouldn't exactly call it likely but a spontaneous mutation could also explain the differences you noticed in the cuttings. And it would kind of make more sense because they weren't in different environments when you took the cuts.

Regardless it's an interesting situation. Thanks for posting.

 

[bushweed]

Hahahah, I guess it wasn't so placid for Nevil to see through it. But get real, anyone who's grown the three knows diesel isn't ssh. I don't doubt JH and SSH's relation tho. And maybe Nevil meant NYCD instead of Sour D. I never saw many Diesel traits in Soma's NYCD. But who knows...

I think he was referring to a strain that went thru Holland in the 90s but not widely known elsewhere.

Grow some hemp and turn it into SSH with your environment. Won't happen.

No but in a poor environment SSH can certainly be turned into hemp.

Hence....

It's not that the europe environment ruined and changed the line.

may not be completely accurate.

If this was an epigenetic effect it would wash out over time.

Verification?

Everyone is already aware of phenotypic plasticity.

 

[GreenintheThumb]

No but in a poor environment SSH can certainly be turned into hemp.

Hence.... may not be completely accurate.

The environment doesn't change the genes you can select from in the population. You can both grow and select hemp or drug cultivars in europe.

Verification?

Google epigenetic. These are changes in gene activation not a change in genotype. Hence the term epi- above genetics. Therefore the changes aren't permanent and "wash out" over generations.

 

[joshuahazen]

he was a darwinist, but believed in "the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics"

pretty sure he rejected mendels theory on genes!.

I'm assuming you are both speaking of Burbank..?

Quote:
"A lack of patience with the theories of others extended to a complete distrust of Mendel's work, and despite his early reading of Darwin, he appeared to believe in the inheritance of acquired characteristics."

from "Hybrid", Noel Kingsbury (2009, University of Chicago Press), Chapter 8 ('Luther Burbank'), p.193:

Hi Unclepeter and Jim,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to expose these blatent untruths for what they are.
I don't blame you for your ignorance regarding Luther Burbank, considering the half truths and outright lies that have been proliferated in regards to Burbank and his work, throughout so much academic literature, owing I suppose to the simple fact of his not belonging to the fraternity of the University Accredited. Never mind, as I am a distinct member of this fraternity and I will personally vouch for him.

It is amazing what Burbank's detractors will say in an effort to discredit him. Don't show me bullshit secondary or tertiary sources when discussing Burbank's opinions. There is no reason to use weak sources when he is one of the most prolific writers on breeding, in history, and his works are public domain. Show me a primary source where Burbank himself discusses acquired inheritance. I don't know for certain, he wrote so much, but I have read at least 3000 pages of Burbank, and I haven't seen him discuss Lemarck or acquired inheritance. I will state emphatically that whether he believed in it or not, it was not something addressed in his techniques or his methodology and as such it is really a moot point. Everything I have read of Burbank indicates to me that he was a staunch advocate of hard genetics and I have never even seen him discuss soft genetics.


He did think generally, that Mendel was given too much credit for “discovering” basic principles which breeders have essentially understood and more or less applied for at least hundreds of years, and he states that he personally, was applying such principles long before he had ever heard of Mendel. Lets also not forget that he was almost a contemporary of Mendel's.
He does however give Mendel and his students full credit for developing a precise Nomenclature for these principles, and for further defining them in a scientific context.
Anyway I will give you a quote from Burbank himself about Mendal, and settle this crap once and for all.

Burbank on Mendel:

“...I would be foremost to admit that the remarkable work of Mendel himself, together with the work of his numerous disciples of the past ten years, has supplied us at once with a tangible explanation or interpretation of a good many facts of plant and animal heredity that heretofore have been but vaguely explicable, even though clearly known and demonstrated as facts.”



Source: Luther Burbank : his methods and discoveries and their practical application

Mendel's writings were actually very controversial and not yet widely accepted in Burbank's time, so for him to make such a strong statement of advocacy towards Mendel, really says a lot.


Now, this is my personal challenge to Uncle Peter and Jim Dankness or anyone for that matter:
Somebody show me a passage from any of Burbank's myriad writings where he gives credence to Lamarck or Lamarck's theory of acquired inheritance, or any discussion whatsoever on soft genetics. I have studied Burbank for years and I must have missed it.

Until then please stop dismissing Burbank's work with lies that have been profligated by others. Don't believe everything you read.

 

[oscar the rotund]

I started book 5 last night and he has not said anything about Larmarkian inheritance yet.

 

[Unclepeter]

"Now, this is my personal challenge to Uncle Peter and Jim Dankness or anyone for that matter:
Somebody show me a passage from any of Burbank's myriad writings where he gives credence to Lamarck or Lamarck's theory of acquired inheritance, or any discussion whatsoever on soft genetics. I have studied Burbank for years and I must have missed it.

Until then please stop dismissing Burbank's work with lies that have been profligated by others. Don't believe everything you read."

here are his words!

"ARE ACQUIRED TRAITS TRANSMITTED?

But all this implies that the imprint of the successive environments was in each case an influence transmitted to the offspring; and this is precisely what I mean to imply. To me it seems quite clear that the observed divergencies between the European and the Japanese daisy are to be explained precisely in this way. I know of no other explanation that has any semblance of plausibility. It is my personal belief that every trait acquired by any organism through the influence of its environment becomes a part of the condition of the organism that tends to reproduce itself through inheritance. In other words I entertain no doubt that all acquired traits of every kind are transmissible as more or less infinitesimal tendencies to the offspring of the organism. But it would not do to dismiss the subject without adverting to the fact that there are many biologists who dispute the possibility of the transmission of acquired traits. Indeed one of the most ardent controversies of recent years has had to do with that point; and doubtless many readers who are not biologists have had their attention called to this controversy and perhaps have received assurance that traits acquired by an individual organism are not transmitted. I shall not here enter into any details of the controversy, although doubtless we shall have occasion to revert to it. But it is well to clarify the subject in the mind of the reader here at the outset, by pointing out that this controversy, like a good many others, is concerned with unessential details, sometimes even with the mere juggling of words, rather than with essentials. As to the broad final analysis of the subject in its remoter bearings, all biologists are agreed. There is no student of the subject speaking with any authority today, who doubts that all animal and vegetable forms have been produced through evolution, and it requires but the slightest consideration of the subject to make it clear that Herbert Spencer was right when he said that no one can be an evolutionist who does not believe that new traits somewhere and somehow acquired can be transmitted. Otherwise there could be no change whatever in any organism from generation to generation or from age to age: in a word there would be no evolution. The point in dispute, then, is not whether any trait and modification of structure, due to the influence of environment, is transmissible, but only as to whether environmental influences that affect the body only and not the germ plasm of the individual are transmissible. But when we reflect that the germ plasm is part and parcel of the organism, it seems fairly clear that this is a distinction without a real difference. As Professor Coulter has recently said, it is largely a matter of definition. We shall have occasion to discuss this phase of heredity more fully in another connection. In the meantime, for our present purpose, it suffices to recall that biologists of every school will admit the force of the general statement that heredity, is the sum of past environments, and-to make the specific application-that our Japanese daisies and our German and American daisies are different because long generations of their ancestors have lived in different geographical territories and therefore have been subject to diverse environing conditions. In a word, then, the Shasta Daisy which stands today as virtually a new creation, so widely different from any other plant that no botanist would hesitate to describe it as a new species, owes its existence to the bringing together of conflicting hereditary tendencies that epitomize the ancestral experiences gained in widely separated geographical territories. Without the aid of man, the plants that had found final refuge in Europe and America and Japan respectively, would never have been brought in contact, and so the combination of traits that built up the Shasta Daisy 'would never have been produced. In that sense, then, artificial selection created the Shasta Daisy, but the forces evoked were those that nature provided, and the entire course of my experiments might be likened to an abbreviated transcript of the processes of natural selection through which species everywhere have been created, and are today still being created, in the world at large."

taken from burbanks book "His methods and discoveries & their practical application" - VOL2 Chapter1

I'd say he def believed in acquired characteristics!! his words Josh....

 

[Unclepeter]

He did think generally, that Mendel was given too much credit for “discovering” basic principles which breeders have essentially understood and more or less applied for at least hundreds of years, and he states that he personally, was applying such principles long before he had ever heard of Mendel. Lets also not forget that he was almost a contemporary of Mendel's.
He does however give Mendel and his students full credit for developing a precise Nomenclature for these principles, and for further defining them in a scientific context.
Anyway I will give you a quote from Burbank himself about Mendal, and settle this crap once and for all.

Burbank on Mendel:

“...I would be foremost to admit that the remarkable work of Mendel himself, together with the work of his numerous disciples of the past ten years, has supplied us at once with a tangible explanation or interpretation of a good many facts of plant and animal heredity that heretofore have been but vaguely explicable, even though clearly known and demonstrated as facts.”

this crap! why don't you give the whole fucking bit of it not a tiny smidgen...

ATAVISM AND UNIT CHARACTERS

Even though we assume that a remote ancestor of our newly developed white blackberry was a pure albino, the case still seems mysterious. Similar cases of reversion to the type of a remote ancestor have been observed from time to time by all breeders of animals and by students of human heredity, and it has been customary to explain such cases of reversion, or at least to label them with the word "atavism." If this word be taken to imply that all traits and tendencies of an ancestral strain are carried forward from generation to generation by heredity, even though unable to make themselves manifest for many generations, and that then, through some unexplained combination of tendencies, the submerged trait is enabled to come to the surface and make itself manifest, the explanation must be admitted to have a certain measure of tangibility. Nevertheless there is a degree of vagueness about the use of the word "tendencies" that robs the explanation of complete satisfactoriness. Meantime the human mind is always groping after tangible explanations of observed phenomena. It is always more satisfactory to be able to visualize processes of nature. It was for this reason that Darwin's theory that natural selection is the most powerful moving factor in the evolution of races gained such general recognition and still remains as the most satisfactory of all hypotheses of evolution. And it is for the same reason that a tangible explanation of the phenomena of atavism or the reversion to ancestral types has gained a tremendous vogue in recent years. The explanation in question is associated with the name of the Austrian monk Mendel, who made some remarkable experiments in plant breeding about half a century ago, and who died in 1884, but whose work remained quite unknown until his obscure publications were rediscovered by Professor Hugo De Vries and two other contemporary workers, and made known to the world about the year 1900. Since then a very large part of the attention of the biological world has been devoted to the further examination of what has come to be spoken of as Mendelian principles. And, as is usual in such cases, unwarranted expectations have been aroused in some quarters as to the real import and meaning of the new point of view; also a good deal of misunderstanding as to the application of the so-called Mendelian laws of heredity to the work of the practical plant developer. In view of the latter fact it is well to bear in mind that such experiments in plant breeding as those through which I developed the white blackberry and hundreds of others were made long before anything was known of Mendel and his experiments, and at a time when the conceptions now associated with Mendelism were absolutely unknown to any person in the world. It is well to emphasize this fact for two reasons: first, as showing that practical breeding, resulting in the bringing to the surface of latent traits, for example, whiteness in the blackberry, could be carried to a sure and rapid culmination without the remotest possibility of guidance from "Mendelism"; secondly, because from this very fact the interpretation of my experiments has fuller significance in its bearing on the truth of the Mendelian formulas than if the experiments had been made with these formulas in mind. This is true not alone of the creation of the white blackberry, but of the similar development of the Shasta Daisy and of a host of other new forms of plant life that will find record in successive chapters of the present work. But while I would thus guard the reader against the mistake, which some enthusiasts have made, of assuming that the Mendelian formula about which so much is heard nowadays must revolutionize the methods and results of the plant breeder, I would be foremost to admit that the remarkable work of Mendel himself, together with the work of his numerous disciples of the past ten years, has supplied us at once with several convenient new terms and with a tangible explanation or interpretation of a good many facts of plant and animal heredity that heretofore have been but vaguely explicable, even though clearly known and demonstrated as facts. The case of the white blackberry with which we are at the moment concerned, is a very good illustration in point. My experiments in the development of that berry, might be interpreted in the older terminology something like this: The big, luscious, black Lawton blackberry proved prepotent when crossed with the small brownish "Crystal White," and the offspring were therefore all large luscious blackberries closely similar to the prepotent parent. But the qualities of the other parent were latent in these offspring, and, the tendency to variation having been stimulated by the hybridizing of these different forms,the offspring of the second generation showed great diversity, and a tendency to reversion to the traits of the more obscure or less prepotent of the two grandparents. In the still later generations, the conflict of hereditary tendencies continuing, an even more striking reversion, according to the principle of atavism, took place in the case of a few of the many progeny, bringing to light the pure white berry as an inheritance from a remote and long forgotten ancestor.

VOL2 Chapter 2

he doesn't exactly endorse it does he?

 

[joshuahazen]

here are his words!


taken from burbanks book "His methods and discoveries & their practical application" - VOL2 Chapter1

I'd say he def believed in acquired characteristics!! his words Josh....

Thanks for correcting me Unclepeter,
I missed that.

 

[joshuahazen]

this crap! why don't you give the whole fucking bit of it not a tiny smidgen...



VOL2 Chapter 2

he doesn't exactly endorse it does he?

That is exactly why I gave the source, so that you could see for yourself.

He does emphatically endorse it, while simultaneously discounting it. In fact if you read a little more closely, you will see that his claim is he was doing very similar work, before anything was known about Mendel, and his work was summarily ignored.

What Burbank is claiming is that from the standpoint of the practical application of breeding, Mendel's assertions are somewhat limited as compared to Burbank's assertions and techniques.

Seems a bit arrogant, doesn't it? Especially considering Mendel had a Masters in Science from Vienna University, and Burbank didn't even have a high school diploma.

However, Practically speaking, I believe Burbank is correct in this assumption. Unfortunately, there has never been a breeder since Burbank who has accomplished even half of what Burbank accomplished in his lifetime.

It is nothing short of a miracle that he managed to record so much of his methodology in his lifetime of breeding, and it is a tragedy that his work has not been taken more seriously, by academia at large.


While Burbank Postulated that "...all acquired traits of every kind are transmissible as more or less infinitesimal tendencies to the offspring of the organism..." and while it is thoroughly possible that he was wrong in this assumption, this hypothesis has little bearing on the practical application of Luther Burbank's Methods, and it is certainly not a reason to ignore them.

The truth is Breeding is an art more than it is a science, Although science is a very valuable tool in this art of breeding, and plays a critical role.


While science is a very important tool in breeding, it is not the most important tool. I would say it ranks 3rd in importance, when we are discussing the tools of breeding.

The Most important tool, is of course the breeder's ability to determine what is the best. His ability to select the best, ie his taste, and his knowledge and experience of the strains he is working with.

The next most important tool, is his access to genetics, and the genetics themselves. What did he start with, most often this equates to: Who does he know. Thanks to folks like Nevil and Shanti, even someone who doesn't know anyone, can still access elite genetics. I rank this second, only because if you lack the most important 1st tool, you will never be able to determine what genetics you are looking for in the first place, and once you have them you won't be able to determine what to select from them.

Scientific knowledge comes in a distant 3rd, in terms of importance, behind these two. And even then, the breeder does not need to know so much about science, to properly utilize the scientific method in breeding. Luther Burbank is evidence of this. And his lessons aren't that complex, really. He seems to be saying and demonstrating essentially the same thing, over and over and over again.

That is why Nevil is the Grandmaster of dope, as arguably the most influential modern breeder of cannabis. It his taste and knowledge of the strains, first and foremost which made him thus, then his access to genetics 2nd...
Of course his extensive scientific knowledge and capability, while not as important as the other two components, still played a critical role...

 

[oscar the rotund]

"...all acquired traits of every kind are transmissible as more or less infinitesimal tendencies to the offspring of the organism..."

I didn't read that as Epigenetics. Notice he said "acquired traits". I read it as the traits acquired during a long period of time grown in a particular environment. That's not Epigenetics. For an example of Epigenetics I read a report where GA3 was sprayed on plants and the next generation had better growth patterns due to GA3 on the previous generation.

Burbank did say that the plant carries millions of years of it's heritage within it. Could be. How much information can the genes of a pea carry?
I don't know the answer but it's a large number.

 

[GreenintheThumb]

We certainly couldn't use science to evaluate our populations now could we?