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Extinct Tomatoes & Why Species Matter More Than Varieties · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Eutrema Limited.
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  But before I founded Eutrema, I was an academic plant scientist.
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  And one of the things I did while I was a plant scientist at universities was
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  I reintroduced a couple of extinct varieties or that weren't being grown anymore of tomatoes.
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  And one was called the Blaby Special. And the Blaby Special was a variety that
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  was grown on the east of Leicester, and it was in an area that used to be growing
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  all the tomatoes for London.
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  But then, since the tomatoes were grown in Spain from the 1970s onwards,
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  this variety became extinct in the UK.
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  And so I reintroduced it from a seed bank in Holland.
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  And I did the same with the Manx Marvel, which was a variety that It came from
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  the Isle of Man, which is in the middle of the Irish Sea, if you're not sure
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  of where the Isle of Man is.
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  Now, I wanted to talk today about the relative importance of preserving rare
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  varieties of plants and rare strains and cultivars of plants versus conserving rare species of plants.
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  Now, people often talk about how important it is to preserve these rare varieties
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  because they might have features in that are useful and phenotypes and genotypes
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  that are useful for breeding purposes.
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  And yes, this is true. They can do and they...
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  They can have unique features about pest and disease control.
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  So it is important to preserve them.
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  But you also have to balance that with the fact that just a few modifications
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  in, say, a tomato's genes, a few mutations can produce wildly different-looking plants.
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  And what might seem on the surface to be massive genetic variation is not really,
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  it's just a mutation here or two.
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  So it's not that massive. You're not retaining a massive
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  amount of genetic diversity by doing
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  that same with apples you know there's a
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  few mutations or cross-breedings and you get wildly different
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  looking apples but really the genetics is very very
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  similar really we're talking when we talk about
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  you know preserving the genetics we're talking about the wild strains and things
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  like this if you could get a wild strain of a wheat ancestor then you can get
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  the genes from that and cross-breed it with wheat and the same for potatoes
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  and tomatoes you're looking at the wild species more than the varieties, really.
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  And moving on to species, when you talk about retaining a rare species,
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  this is far, far more important. This is a whole species.
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  It's the difference between making sure that we retain people with really big,
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  long noses compared to retaining a whole species of humans.
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  It's off the scale different, isn't it? you know
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  yeah it would be a shame if everyone with long noses went extinct
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  tomorrow and died off but that's completely different to the whole of humanity
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  disappearing and that's the same with say a rare orchid and preserving a rare
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  orchid than it is preserving a few different tomato varieties or a few legal
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  cannabis strains and things like this so yes it's important to retain genetic diversity,
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  but really you don't know what is genetic diversity until you actually look.
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  Do a genetic study and see how different the genes are.
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  Look at DNA profiling and things like this, look at the genetic difference.
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  It's not an area I'm a particular expert on, but certainly know that we can
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  over-exaggerate the importance of retaining rare strains and varieties,
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  heritage varieties sometimes.
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  And a lot of the times that the
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  ones that have gone very, very rare are susceptible to pests and diseases.
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  So if you think about like Asacrae used to be a really popular tomato variety
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  and now it's not grown really anywhere
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  apart from plant scientists use it because they've always used it.
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  Commercial growers don't use it because it's not resistant to lots of pest diseases
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  and viruses, but it was probably used as the starting block for the breeding of new varieties.
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  So there will be asochraic genetics in there, it's just that it's not called asochraic anymore.
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  So if I was you, and when you think about things that we should be conserving,
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  then always consider like preserving species
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  and whole plant genera that are
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  going extinct in the wilds you know the the destruction of
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  the rainforest and like this this isn't far more of an
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  issue than it is preserving a few tomato or
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  apple varieties i'd love to know your thoughts because it's fairly
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  controversial that opinion and you think i've missed
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  anything got anything wrong then please do let me know if you
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  found this episode useful then please do leave an apple
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  podcast review if you can do because it helps out
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  the podcast tremendously because it shoots us up the podcast charts if you're
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  listening on any other podcast platforms chill out and relax and
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  just wait for the next episode because it doesn't make any difference if you leave a review
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  on them or not if you're on those
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  other platforms perhaps you could check out utreema.co.uk and
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  see what we're able to offer in hydroponics and in other areas yeah we do lots
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  of things in sports turf and lawn care and things like this and and in agriculture
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  large-scale field-grown crops as well as soilless crops thank you very much
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  for listening until tomorrow goodbye.