A01=Noel Kingsbury
agriculture
authenticity
Author_Noel Kingsbury
biodiversity
Category=TVB
Category=TVS
cereal crop
domestication
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_tech-engineering
famine
farming
flowers
food preservation
fruit
gardening
genetic resources
genetically modified crops
genetics
germination
globalization
green revolution
health
high yield
history
hybridization
insecticides
luther burbank
mendel
natural
nature
nonfiction
nutrition
organic
plant breeding
politics
produce
production
property rights
science
technology
ussr
vegetables
world hunger
Product details
- ISBN 9780226437040
- Weight: 822g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2009
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-packed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succulent red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange carrots pulled from loamy brown soil, swirling heads of green lettuce basking in the sun. With "Hybrid", Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Drawing on historical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs.
Noel Kingsbury is a horticulturalist and the author of many books, including Designing with Plants and Natural Gardening in Small Spaces, and coeditor of Vista: The Culture and Politics of Gardens.
