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posted by janrinok on Wednesday December 28 2016, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-your-5-a-day dept.

Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space.

For nearly 20 years, Morton's work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren't just for different types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf.

Such patents have increased in the years since, and are encroaching on a growing range of crops, from corn to carrots — a trend that has plant breeders, environmentalists and food security experts concerned about the future of the food production.

https://ensia.com/features/open-source-seeds/


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:35AM (#446934)

    Nobody religious should find the idea of patenting biology, whether bred or engineered, as sane.

    Additionally, by and large this is an end run around selective breeding patents (yes, they are a thing!) that only allow 2 years of patent protection, as opposed to 'invention' patents which have a 10 year (is it 20 with extension?) patent protection window. I've forgotten most of the details on it, but the former mentioned patent law is a rather interesting read.

    Having said that, my three plugs for non-GMO seeds:
    rareseeds.com - US - Baker Creek Seed Co. - Best millenial success story :) Anti-GMO, concerned with the preservation of native seeds both local and abroad.
    rarepalmseeds.com - EU - Huge quantity of non-gmo seeds of every variety, from fruits to pines to palms to assorted more exotic plants.
    tradewindsfruit.com - US - Carries an insane stock of exotics, including Cacao, various breeds of coffee, and hundreds of other interesting plant varieties. Some overlap with the above sites, but also some unique.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:44AM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday December 29 2016, @07:44AM (#447005) Journal

    Best of all with trade winds. They publish (or at least used) the relevant phytosanitary certificates (if anyone wonder why this matters let's just say we want to avoid more plants suffering the fate of the americn chestnut [very interesting read btw]).

    If anyone wants to try to grow cacao read up on it first (seeds needs to be fresh, seeds do not survive a cold spell, the plants are insanely picky. So, place an order well im advance of seesa becimning available) since it is the masterclass in growing plants if you do it outside its range.

    For EU hobbyists jungleseeds.co.uk is very interesting for oddball seeds as well (UK based company that specialised in palma, they also have cacao in stock at times).

    (I'm just an insane apartmentdwelling hobbyist)