Woody Agriculture Weblog
The Future of The World Is Nuts!(TM)
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Few people realize the depth of the science behind Badgersett hazels. There is no way to truly convey it in a brief story; but part of the difference between BRC hazels and anyone else's is the extreme rigor of our process. WE DO NOT SELL PLANTS TO ANY GROWER THAT DO NOT HAVE YEARS OF PRODUCTION RECORDS IN OUR DATABASE. Amateur workers have a strong tendency to see a plant "look good" for two or 3 years- then decide this is a "one in a million plant!" The reality is that 10 years of records is barely adequate. We have many instances of plants "looking good" for 5 years- then collapsing, for many reasons. We are forced to move a little faster than we'd like, in fact- our selection cycle is based on 6 years of production (NOT AGE). We'd rather it was 15 years, but the human life cycle won't permit that luxury. We find that plants 10 years old, with 6 years of good consistent production, USUALLY are actually "good" plants, and worth growing seedlings from them. The word USUALLY, however, is critical. An individual plant is NOT required to conform to the "usually".
A good example is our plant G-008-S. It's a spectacular plant, with record-breaking crops- and our data on its crops go back to 1986. An excellent candidate for a "parent" plant. Unfortunately- so far, 80% of its seedlings are lethally suseptible to EFB - although G-008-S itself is not.
This is a typical pitfall in plant breeding- one amateurs like to ignore- which has dire consequences for anyone planting such untested stock. Ten years later, your investment is likely to come to nothing.
Here's what one page of the database looks like; each line is actually a link to another database, with all that year's data; many more parameters than show on this summary page. The reason for the crop collapse after 2000? Complete lack of fertilizer for several years; done on purpose, so we can learn how this all works.
Last update: Sunday, March 6, 2005 at 9:42:07 AM.
