Re:Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds'
by searine on Thursday April 17, 2014 @01:59PM
(#7605178)
The skill isn't the hard part. The hard part is getting the money to make the plant.
The problem is that molecular biology often doesn't work. So it takes lots of time and experiments to get it right. Which costs money. Lots of money.
Re:Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds'
by dragonwriter on Thursday April 17, 2014 @02:06PM
(#7605226)
> The skill isn't the hard part.
Right, which is why I said that fewer (though many) people have the other resources.
> The problem is that molecular biology often doesn't work. So it takes lots of time and experiments to get it right. Which costs money. Lots of money.
And there's lots of people doing it now.
The real question isn't "does anyone have the resources to use these", its "can anyone come up with a business model where it makes sense to use these for further development".
Lots of people have the skill, and there are lots of universities and private labs (though probably few private individuals, compared to the parallel case with software) with the required hardware and facilities.