Re:RNA breakthrough creates crops that can grow 50 percent m...
by lugged on Friday September 03, 2021 @10:49AM
(#28404945)
I really wonder sometimes how much is human selection on purpose and how much is human selection by simply finding the bigger crops easier to forage.
Guessing it's a bit of both.
I don't know that this is solid reasoning. Certainly there is some limit eventually imposed by soil nutrient content but there could also be other reasons plants don't grow large fruit. A big one being that plants which grow their fruit to spread seeds reach efficiency when there is enough fruit to attract a spreading organism and no more.
In fact, basically all the plants we consume were already unusually large even before the green revolution. Humans had selected or hybridized the popular cultivars to an extreme already.
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that this size of plant crosses some threshold for the soil, it's just not safe to assume it does either.