Crops fashioned by Man

« Back to The history of breeding | Print

Flashback over 10,000 years of breeding

For nearly 10,000 years, mankind has continued to domesticate living organisms, first empirically and then scientifically. By selecting the best cereal seeds, the fullest ears, the best seeds and the plumpest fruits and planting them again, by using imagination to create and continuously improve tools and methods, mankind has constantly made plants evolve to improve their characteristics.

But progress in agriculture was at first slow, irregular and marred by harsh famines.

In the middle of the 19th century, new knowledge* gave birth to new breeding methods enabling progress in terms of productivity and resistance to pathogens. It was not until the second half of the 20th century, with the convergence of new knowledge in mechanization, fertilization, plant protection and genetics, that the pace of progress accelerated creating the basis of the “green revolution”. Today, plant genomics and transgenesis are once again accelerating progress in genetic engineering (knowledge and tools). When used conscientiously and with scientific precision, plant biotechnologies lead to two complementary activities: the creation of conventional varieties or of transgenic varieties, that are perfectly in line with this tradition.
_{* Explanation of the mechanisms of heredity by Mendel in 1865 and the use of genealogical breeding.}

Breeding over the course of history
8,000 BC Men domesticated plants for cultivation and animals for breeding.
1663 Robert Hooke discovered the existence of cells by observing plant tissue with a microscope.
1830 Proteins were discovered.
1859 Charles Darwin published his landmark book: The Origin of Species. The theory of the evolution of species through natural selection was born.
1865 Gregor Mendel set out the laws of heredity. He is considered the father of modern genetics (genes transmitted from one generation to another).
1883 Vilmorin commercialised Dattel, the first wheat variety produced through genealogical selection.
1910 William James Beal developed the first experimental corn hybrid at the University of Michigan.
1933 The first corn hybrid produced through cross-breeding was commercialized in the United States.
1953 James Watson and Francis Crick described the double helix structure of DNA, the vector of heredity.
1968 Marshall W. Niremberg, an American biochemist, described the genetic code.
1978 Human insulin was produced for the first time in transgenic bacteria.
1983 The first transgenic tobacco was produced by Profesor Van Montagu's team at Ghent University in Belgium.
1996 The first varieties of herbicide resistant transgenic soybeans were commercialised in the United States.
2009 More than 134 million hectares of GMO varieties were cultivated worldwide.

OGMs? Just another step in the history of plant improvement
Some see transgenesis as a disruptive technology. For Limagrain researchers and agronomists, who carry on the age-old practice of plant breeding, transgenesis is viewed more as the continuation of a tradition of technical progress. Genetically modified plants correspond to a new phase in the very long history of plant improvement. Whatever the technique used, breeders are craftsmen of living organisms who preserve, maintain and enrich biodiversity passionately.