What! … no potatoes?
by Don Batten
Governments are waking up to the need to preserve the ‘wild’ varieties
of our food plants, with their rich stores of information. A highly qualified plant
scientist tells us how this highlights the fallacy of evolution.
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Why are there so many people of Irish descent in North America and Australia? It
harks back to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. Over 1.5 million people died
in Ireland when the potato crops failed due to a disease known as potato blight.
Many people emigrated.
Why did the potatoes succumb to the disease? Potatoes came from the Andes mountains
of South America, where many different varieties were grown, including some which
could resist potato blight disease. When potatoes were introduced to Europe in the
1500s, this did not include varieties with resistance to this disease.
Therefore the crops in Europe were all susceptible to the disease when
it arrived. (Ireland suffered the most because of its very high dependence on potatoes
for the complex carbohydrate portion of their diet, whereas others had more grain
crops). They succumbed because of the lack of genetic variety, which included the
genes for resistance to blight.
The pattern has been repeated many times since. In 1970 in the U.S., genetic uniformity
resulted in loss of almost a billion dollars worth of maize because 80% of the varieties
being grown were susceptible to a virulent disease known as ‘southern leaf
blight.’1
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Too successful?
Plant breeders have been very successful in increasing the yields of all sorts of
crop plants—so successful that farmers have been replacing the local, traditional
varieties with the new varieties. For example, in China, at least 9,000 varieties
of wheat have been lost since 1949.
The ‘Green Revolution’ saw the development of high-yielding rice and
wheat varieties and their rapid replacement of traditional, community-bred varieties
(‘landraces’). For example, by 1984 in Bangladesh, 96% of the wheat
grown consisted of Green Revolution varieties.
A single variety of the ‘miracle wheat’ accounted for 67% of all the
wheat planted.2 This has contributed
to the feeding of many millions of people. However, the loss of the traditional
varieties, and the reliance on relatively few new varieties, poses problems.
Problems
Losing information on the farm
Some of our best cultivated plants have obviously lost genetic information—for
example, navel oranges do not produce seeds. However, genetic uniformity also causes
loss of information. Many crops are made genetically uniform by inbreeding4 so that the farmer will get consistent performance
from each plant—for example, all the sunflower plants will ripen their grain
at the same time. Wild sunflower plants have a range of ripening times, seed size,
etc.
This means that the varieties bred for agriculture are lacking genetic information
present in the wild strains—and they have to be this way to be most suitable
for agriculture.
The problem also applies to farm animals. Breeds of cattle, for example, breed true-to-type.
Friesian milking cows, mated with Friesian bulls, will produce further Friesian
milking cows, not a Beef Shorthorn (which does not produce as much milk, but produces
more meat). To get a strain of animal to breed true-to-type, they are inbred until
variant individuals or ‘off-types’ are no longer produced. This results
in the two copies (one from each parent) of many genes being the same, whereas in
wild animals, the two copies can be different, resulting in variation in the offspring.
So domestic breeds of animals are missing a lot of the genetic information in wild
animals.
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Large areas of a uniform variety are susceptible to new strains of pests and disease
for which the variety lacks resistance. These new pest or disease strains can be
introduced from overseas, or new varieties can occur through normal reproduction
which results in new combinations of existing genes. Just as with antibiotic resistance,
these new disease strains do not arise through the development of new, functional
genes,3 so this has nothing to do
with particles-to-people evolution.
To try to keep ahead of new strains of pests and diseases, plant breeders introduce
new genes from wild plants of the crop species, or from ‘landraces,’
into new varieties. New varieties generally last only five to seven years before
they are replaced.
However, with loss of the wild types and landraces, plant breeders could lack the
sources of genes for the further breeding needed to increase yields, decrease dependence
on fertilizers and pesticides, improve quality, breed for drought resistance, cold/heat
tolerance, salt tolerance, and many other things. So the loss of the genetic information
needed to achieve these objectives is a serious problem. The U.N.’s Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that about 75% of genetic diversity in
agricultural crops has been lost this century—largely by the replacement of
landraces with the new varieties. Authorities are beginning to respond to this problem—see
banking on genes.
Denying evolution
Many scientists believe the dogma that the blind, purposeless forces of evolution
(random mutations and natural selection) created all the genetic information in
plants.
Yet the (belated) push to preserve the wild varieties of our food plants highlights
the fact that no amount of selection (artificial, by breeders, or natural) can generate
information which is not there!
 Why
don’t strawberries taste like Dad’s used to?
Many people remember the deliciously sweet, fragrant strawberries picked from their
home garden. They were smaller than the ones available today, but they tasted and
smelled better. What has happened?
People buy with their eyes, so nice big, red strawberries sell well. Plant breeders
therefore concentrated on breeding big, red strawberries with high yield and good
shelf life. In concentrating on these characteristics, flavour has been neglected.
Indeed it is possible that selecting for high yield may (inadvertently) have selected
for low flavour!
The point is that selecting for one characteristic can be at the expense of something
else. One character can be accentuated while another is diminished. There are biological
limits to what can be achieved. Breeding cannot ‘create’ new features
for which there are no genes, or which exceed the biological capabilities of the
organism.
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If random copying mistakes (mutations) originally generated all the information,
surely it should not be too hard for highly intelligent scientists to create the
required genes for breeding new improved varieties? However, with all that we now
know about genes, no one can yet create a gene—for example, for rust resistance—from
scratch.7 Plant breeders recognize
that the information in the genes of plants is irreplaceable.
The evolutionist E.O. Wilson wrote: ‘Each species is the repository of an
immense amount of genetic information. The number of genes range from about 1,000
in bacteria and 10,000 in some fungi to 700,000 or more in many flowering plants
and a few animals … . If stretched out fully, the DNA [in one cell] would
be roughly a meter long. But this molecule is invisible to the naked eye. …
The full information contained therein, if translated into ordinary-size letter
of printed text, would just about fill all 15 editions of the Encyclopædia
Britannica published since 1768.’8
Biologist David Janzen, University of Pennsylvania, said that destroying tropical
forests for paper manufacture would be ‘like pulping the Library of Congress
to get newsprint.’8
Just as the information in books comes from an intelligent source, so the information
in the genes of living things also comes from an intelligent source.
This source is clearly far more knowledgeable and intelligent than we who cannot
yet create the genetic information ourselves and so we have to be concerned about
the loss of genetic diversity.
In their concern for the loss of this diversity, plant breeders agree that the genetic
information is irreplaceable, and tacitly admit that it did not arise through random,
non-intelligent processes, and that selection cannot re-create it, once lost.
Faith that the blind forces of ‘evolution’ created all the genetic information
is indeed a blind faith.
Banking on genes
In recognition of the problem with crop plants, ‘gene banks’ for various
crops have been set up around the world. For example, more than 80,000 rice varieties
are maintained at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.
The gene bank provides rice seed samples on request. When Cambodia got through the
notorious evolution-inspired Pol Pot upheavals, the rice farmers could resume growing
their lost varieties from seed supplied from the rice seed collection.
However, seeds held in gene banks are vulnerable because of the need to grow the
seed periodically to produce fresh seed. Gene banks are labour intensive, costly
to maintain, and not easy to raise funds for. Storage at –20°C enables
some seed to remain viable for up to 100 years, but this depends on continuous maintenance
of refrigeration facilities. From a survey, FAO estimated that almost half of all
stored seeds need to be regenerated—that is, these strains are liable to be
lost.5
Also, only major crop plants are covered by such gene banks. Non-cereal plants which
are an important source of food in subsistence agriculture in the tropics tend to
be neglected in gene banks. For example, wheat accounts for 14% of all gene banks,
whereas cassava, a major poor people’s crop, accounts for only 0.5%.6
In addition to the large gene banks, there are ‘Seed Saver’ groups who
voluntarily collect and grow traditional varieties no longer grown commercially
by farmers. Folk involved in such seed saving actions network with one another to
share rare varieties.
Organizations concerned with conserving genetic resources, such as The International
Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) in Rome, Italy, now recognize the importance
of getting farmers themselves to maintain their traditional varieties. Non-government
organizations (NGOs) have been leading the way with this approach. Many of these
‘NGOs’ are Christian organizations involved in economic uplift work
in developing countries. Return to text.
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Readers’ comments:
Graham P., New Zealand, 3 March 2010
Great article.
James H., Australia, 5 March 2010
Genetic deterioation is, surely, proof that God originally created every-thing absolutely
perfect!
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References and notes
- Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) website:
<http://www.fao.org/sd/epdirect/epre0040.htm>, 9 February 1998.
Return to text.
- U.S. National Research Council Board on Agriculture, 1993.
Managing Genetic Resources: Agricultural Crop Issues and Policies, National
Academy Press, Washington, p. 70. Return to text.
- Wieland, C.,
Superbugs: Not super after all, Creation 20(1):10–13,
December, 1997. Return to text.
- Bred among themselves only, with culling of ‘off-types.’
Return to text.
- FAO, State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for
Food and Agriculture, Rome, p. 62, 1996. Return to text.
- Ref. 5, p. 60. Return to text.
- Note that this differs from genetic engineering in which already
existing genes from one organism are inserted into another. Return to
text.
- Cited from Anon., Genetic diversity, World Resources Institute,
1991, <http://www.wri.org>. Return to text.
| Ken E. wrote: “I just wanted to drop a note to express my gratitude for the kind of information you supply at the CMI web-site. I love science and find it thrilling to see how it may be used to glorify God and build faith in Him.” Glorify God in His creation.  | | |
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