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echinosum wrote:


Michael Bell;894053 Wrote:
I have concieved the truly wild idea of developing alder into a grain
crop. If you look at the cones on some alder trees and imagine them as
ears of wheat, you can see it would be a good crop.

No, I can't see it would be a good crop at all, at least with the kind
of improvement you might make in a few generations. It looks like
obsessive folly to me.

I know that it is a wild idea, I say so. I don't want to be trapped
into a no-hope project year after year as I have seen some do (though
not with a plant-breeding project) and leave an awkward project which
they won't know what to do with. I have decided that if I don't find
SIGNIFICANTLY bigger seeds this autumn, I will abandon the project.
You've got to know when to cut your losses. But going round the
country in autumn sifting through seeds is not hell on earth.

Observe that every tree-crop we currently have, the object harvested is
quite economically valuable, much more valuable than the object
harvested off grasses, and other easily mechanically harvested crops
with high yield/area (eg, grapes for conversion to juice/wine, beans,
etc). To be worth cropping as a tree crop, you need to improve it so
much that each cone is as economically valuable as an olive, almond,
cherry, pine-nut, etc. If the cone is only as economically valuable as
a grain of wheat, it won't be worth harvesting. Though the value at
which it can be economically harvested falls if, as for example with the
olive, you can just spread a sheet and shake the tree.

A fruit cannot be bigger than the plant that bears it. You could not
have an apple on a grass, it couldn't feed it. A pineapple is a big
fruit, but it is borne on a big plant. Likewise a maize cob.

[snip]

Do you know the
PFAF (plants for a future) database. It is studded with wonderful
plants of good food value that for some reason or other just don't get
cultivated on any scale.

I do know of it. On it I found a Finn who gathers alder seed as they
fall on the snow and roasts them.

Hazel/Cobnut is one tree with undeveloped potential. I visited it. I
concluded that it had given up and resigned itself to becoming a
heritage industry like steam railways. I think that mechanised
harvesting methods would give it a commercial future. I am going to
pilot my methods on a local Hazel plantation this autumn.

Are you saying that of all the plants on the planet NO OTHERS have
potential value. This one might be a winner. I'll give it a season's
effort. You never know your luck.

Michael Bell






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