Can Plant Breeding Go Open Source?

Claire.LubyOn a warm and sunny day last fall, a handful of horticultural students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) descended on Elderberry Hill Farm, a small CSA
just across the lake from campus. They were harvesting carrots: orange, yellow, and purple; skinny and fat; stubby and elongated.

With a care and precision not normally associated with carrot har- vest, they logged the numbered tags for each small row, selected about a dozen of the better specimens, and bagged them for further study back in the lab. As they worked, they bantered about breeding technology, how long grad school takes, food politics, and the ethics of genetic engineering.

This carrot project led by Claire Luby (pictured on the cover of this issue) has radical intent.  Continue reading the article here.