Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds' | Hacker News Reader

Plant Breeders Release First 'Open Source Seeds'

npr.org

146 pointsptwobrussell44 comments

I bought some tomatoes at the supermarket. I ate some of them and decided they were really tasty. I squeezed the squishy stuff from some of them into a bowl and fermented it to get the seeds out of their growth-inhibiting sacks. I planted these and now I have tasty tomatoes growing on my windowsill.

If anyone thinks they have any rights to these seeds that I paid for (as part of the tomatoes), they're wrong on several levels, and if there is legislation that says they're not wrong, that legislation is in dire need of repair.

Certainly so in many cases, but it's not difficult to imagine strains for mass consumption hobbled by proprietary sequences that cause the plants to wither without a certain additive or activate some kind of DNA-destruction process if not crossbred with another secret strain.

It's sad to think so, but it may be a wise course to consider the freedom to grow a tomato you found at the supermarket a temporary privilege while the ones who grew it find ways of taking it away and cementing their advantage. Imagine 15 years ago saying "I can take this game and install it on my computer, my kid's computer, and my laptop" or "I'll lend this copy of a movie to a friend." These processes, once simple and impossible to interrupt, are now often carried out only with permission. Other examples, of course, abound.

Open source seeds may be an idea before its time, but should its time arrive, we'll be glad to have nurtured it early!

"Seeding pirated material" will have a whole new meaning.

You don't really even need legislation. Most produce you buy from the supermarket are from F1 Hybrids [1] which if you plant the seeds are highly variant and lack vigor (i'm not sure of the % of tomatoes in supermarkets are F1s specifically though). This is one natural way things like this have not come to reality and one way most seed producers (especially ones focused on commercial use) use to protect their varieties.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

Agreed. You can't generally won't get the same plant from a commercially produced tomato. Instead you will get all kinds of random stuff. Some of it may produce good tomatoes, some may not.

If you are going to go to the effort of growing a garden it's probably worth spending a buck or two and getting some Heirloom or open pollinated seeds. These will breed true and you can replant the seeds from the fruits and get the same plant as the parent.

We've reached a landmark in society: there's DRM in our tomatoes.

These turned out alright and are just as tasty as their parent generation: http://cl.ly/image/3w1W1L0X2g2m

Well especially in your case, since you grew for personal use and not commercially.

As for commercial use though, I think it's wrong for companies to go after farmers who have had seed unwittingly mixed into their own stock. If no theft can be proven. No law has been broken.

Part of the problem, however, is that you can't do that and get the same variety with some plants on the second generation. (I guess this might different with tomatoes)

>Most commercial vegetable seeds are hybrids, which come with a kind of built-in security lock; if you replant seed from a hybrid, you won't get exactly the same kind of plant.

People have been sharing heirloom variety seeds with each other for a long time, along with their local sourdough cultures, kefir mother cultures, yeast strains, and other re-propagatable biological source materials.

So it is great that professional horticulturists recognize the value of that enough to contribute their work to the system. Home-hobbyist gardeners/bakers/zymurgists/etc. simply don't have access to the same techniques used for commercial production.

It would also be great if a professional could curate a biological distribution package for food polycultures. A lot of people are familiar with the "three sisters" polyculture of corn, beans, and squash, but there are presumably others that would work just as well. Additionally, we now know that the microbiota of the soil itself can be as important as the genomes in the seeds. What if you could make your potting soil resemble Iowa corn field topsoil by pouring a few mL of open source dirt juice into it?

Nice comment, however I doubt any informed gardener would want to emulate Iowa corn field topsoil, it probably has just slightly more biota in it than the Atacama desert at this point.

Good point. But back when I lived in that general area, I had to mow my lawn at least twice a week during the spring and fall with a higher-horsepower lawnmower to keep the neighborhood association off my back. I wish I could have that dirt where I am living now. Even the dandelions are having a hard time.

So maybe I should amend my statement to "Iowa dirt before factory farming ruined it"?

This is why the movement away from large-scale, super intense farming isn't gaining much traction. When your argument is founded on hyperbole like that, it is ineffective, condescending, and generally not productive.

There is a vast, vast, vast difference in the quality of soil in a desert, and the places where your food comes from. Most farmers are aware of topsoil management and conservation, most practice some form of both of those things. The local university extension offices are hyper-active in farming communities, and most farmers not only support, but practice sustainability practices including no-till, reducing chemical dependency, proper crop rotation and set-aside practices. Believe it or not, we all understand that there is only so much soil to use, and conserving what we can would be in our best interest.

Large corporations do not, for the most part, that is true.

But, I digress. You want to help your viewpoint? Lose the hyperbole. It causes people to bristle automatically (see this post for an example).

Having worked in R&D (molecular breeding dept) of <insert huge agribusiness> for 4 years, this article has highlighted that I do in fact suffer from Gell-Mann Amnesia.

There a great many things that this article gets wrong/not quite right, and yet I'll probably read the next NPR story and think "oh, that is interesting". http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...

Would love to read a detailed analysis of the article. I'm presently a front-end dev for a gardener's supply company, so my curiosity is piqued.

1. they kind of implied that the seed companies build in a "security lock" on hybrid plants. Hybrid progeny have wildly different/non-uniform offspring because that is just the way genetics work. You have two pools of inbred (100% or near homozygous) plants, you cross pollinate them and they have very uniform results because they have pretty uniform genetics and have "hybrid vigor". The next generation (what the farmer harvests) has likely been open air pollinated has a garbled mess of genetics and will therefore underperform if planted. Enough so that it isn't worth trying to re-plant instead of buying new seed. It depends of the species however, Corn is like this, but soybeans are a self pollinating plant so hybrid soybeans aren't really a thing.

2. Not all plants are patent-able, only ones that reproduce asexually. Monansto/DuPont don't patent varieties of corn or soybeans as they don't reproduce asexually, but they DO patent gene insertions (aka BioTech Traits, or BT traits). Getting a gene that kills rootworm or has glyphosate (roundup) resistance is mind bogglingly expensive. When a variety has multiple traits inserted you'll hear it called "a stack". These high cost, high benefit efforts are precisely the kinds of things we would want to be patent-able to encourage companies to invest the huge amount of resources.

Curious on the "hybrid progeny have wildly different/non-uniform offspring." I bought some "Big Thai Hybrid" chilies because that's what the store had (rather than just regular Thai chilies). Any idea how far offspring will diverge? I'd imagine that if I saved seed I'd get something much like a Thai chili ...

Update: Go ahead, save seeds from your hybrid tomatoes!

http://blog.arrowheadalpines.com/2011/08/go-ahead-save-seeds...

In response to 1: If all the genetics in a crop are nearly identical, that may make the crop uniforms and predictable, but it also makes the crop uniformly susceptible to drought, disease or crop predators (e.g. insects). That's great if you're in the business of selling chemicals to kill specific diseases or predators, but not so great if you have to buy them. A genetically diverse crop will have have some plants that can withstand whatever.

The crop yield may be lower, but the cost of inputs (e.g. chemicals) will also be lower. If the goal is to maximize farmer profit, then there may be a more optimal solution that uses greater genetic diversity.

Well, you're still going to have many varieties (genetic profiles). The big seed companies will sell 5-10 varieties per region. Regions depend on growing season length, soil conditions, climate. Iowa has 7 regions, IIRC. If I had to guess in the whole country there are ~100+ regions. That means thousands of hybrids across the different seed companies across the country. So even if a pest knocked out one variety (which doesn't really happen), it isn't like the whole system is going to come crumbling down. They spend billions researching it and there are lots of rules regarding "refuge" to ensure that insects and diseases don't build up a tolerance to treatments.

Usually when you hear about people worry about "the mono-culture" they are advocating that we plant more of a different types of plants (canola, sunflower, sorghum, wheat), not different varieties of corn/beans.

Also, that they are all identical is bit of a misnomer. They are, but they are exceptionally strong, vigorous plants (google "hybrid vigor" or "heterosis").

Thanks! Both great insights, and and the self-polinating/asexual reproduction bits seem like they'll occupy the rest of my afternoon in a wikipedia-hole.

This idea makes sense at first blush, at least to this non-plant-breeder.

At first I wondered how much of a difference it could or would make since while in software anyone can code in their free time, how many people can splice a gene? But if they get universities to join the effort so that work at that university has to result in Free seeds, I could see it catching on and working.

As a planter, I'd certainly prefer to have seeds that minimized risks of legal hassle.

I would also be curious to see what would happen when the reverse of one of Monsanto's legal attacks happened -- if Free seeds made their way into Monsanto's stock, could their legal attack on farmers be used against them? Or de-fanged?

As logfromblammo notes, this is a very old thing. Perhaps as old as agriculture itself.

That said, I see nothing wrong with the branding, as an education and promotion drive. If it gets more gardens in, all the better.

(I try to beat the "input costs" with my home container drip system, and not abuse the planet by growing $400 vanity tomatoes. Recycle, reuse, buy on closeout.)

It doesn't take gene splicing to create a new variety you just need to use selective breeding which anyone can do and people have been doing for 1000s of years [1]. My understanding is that most of the varieties produced by Universities are selectively bred and not necessarily genetically modified.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding

> At first I wondered how much of a difference it could or would make since while in software anyone can code in their free time, how many people can splice a gene?

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.

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.

> 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".

It's insane that this isn't the default position. This is a very positive step but simultaneously depressing, highlighting the dire situation that Monsanto and friends have manoeuvred us into.

It used to be the case but there are powerful groups having good success in changing it (and making great profits as a result). See http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2014/03/26/can-this-... for one story.

Controlling the germplasm for staple crops like soybeans and corn is hugely profitable. As a percentage of crop inputs, the cost of quality seed has been rising at a crazy rate. Allowing patents of genes is one way of directing money to plant breeding. However, I think long term it is a bad policy, much like allowing extremely long copyright terms on creative works. Society will suffer when the available public domain material shrinks.

Strange that a practice that has been practiced for tens of thousands of years by cultures all over the world has to stake a legal claim for itself, and re-brand as "Open Source" in order to survive.

Very, very strange.

Not so strange when you realize the amount money flowing to the breeders or their dominance over staple crop seed. US soybean area is expected to be about 83.6m acres. Patented soybean seed costs roughly 35 $/ac more than non-patented. That's close to 3 billion revenue to patent holders in a single year (patented seed has >90% market share).

Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to GMO. It could be a valid and safe breeding technique. The campaign to brand it as dangerous or evil is without scientific basis. However, I am very much against the patenting of genes, genetic traits, seeds, etc.

To be slightly pedantic, It's more like a GNU seed... And I would hesitate to call it the first, people have been doing this for millennia. But it's great to see push back against plant patents here.

I think this is bad, not because I don't like open source other things, but the patenting and commercialization of genes is something that we cannot permit. Establishing the difference between regular seeds and open source seeds is a step in the wrong direction, as there should never be a time that that distinction is necessary.

Why? If a company can make a better crop, they should be allowed to commercialize it and make money off it. No one should be forced to pay for patented crops (which is somewhat of an issue in some cases due to cross contamination), but otherwise I don't see what the benefit is in banning private research.

The assumption that a company can make a "better crop" is naive. There is nothing like a "better crop". It may be better about some features. What is underestimated is that it may have introduced regression on others yet unnoticed or disregarded. Bioengineering is very complex and currently based on trial and error. It's not yet true engineering.

Transpose this to software development. Is a modified program correct and without regressions because it "works" ? Until we don't fully understand how all the biochemestry works it's like changing the software code in semi random ways and see if something "better" comes out of it. What fool would do that in software engineering ?

If it wasn't "better" than farmers wouldn't buy it/use it. Maybe it's quality is debatable but then they are free to debate and decide.

None of that has anything to do with patents.

It can be a better look to be bought and decrease the taste quality. Very frequent in todays vegetables found on hypermarkets.

I definitely don't propose we ban research. Genetic modification is the future in many areas. But patenting the genes and being allowed to restrict the use of organisms containing those genes is lunacy. Especially at this point, where genetic code isn't actually being created, so much as it's being taken from on species and spliced into another. The equivalent of me taking paragraphs from different books, putting them into sections of another book, and claiming it to be my original work.

We live in a world where doctors can withhold the information on a patients death during a gene therapy treatment due to the genes being proprietary information. There have even been cases were doctors have patented specific genetic information from their patients, unbehest to them during treatments.

It's all a fine, fine line.

Staple crops are pretty important to the welfare of almost everyone in the country that uses them, right? Developing them is expensive and requires lots of people with high-grade scientific educations, right?

To me, that sounds like the kind of situation that would benefit from being made public. I mean, the theory makes sense: taxpayers share the burden of developing the plants they all consume. Something like the NSF's grant funding for most other science would work really well. This kind of situation would also facilitate a more permissive attitude toward sharing knowledge and seeds to help intellectuals and hobbyists (the same way universities make resources in other fields available to intellectuals and hobbyists).

Cool post.

But this idea isn't new at all.

In fact most of the "cheap" seeds you see on seed racks at stores like the dollar store are "open source". Seeds like Black Seed Simpson Lettuce and Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans for instance.

One has to remember that people have been breeding for thousands of years before seed patents came into being and there are many many patent free varieties. These are seldom are grown commercially because hybrids have preferable characteristics for commercial growers, but for home growers and smaller market gardens they have stood the test of time.

It is neat that people are continuing to do this with new varieties, but the concept is hardly novel and these are not even close to the "first open source seeds".

Interesting. I remember a few years ago, Craig Venter did something where he "signed" a genetic sequence with a specific code snippet to make sure the experiment worked as expected [1]. Do you think they could do something like that here to make sure nobody is using this in proprietary seed? In other words, insert a specific code in the DNA, then if there is ever a legal dispute about where the seeds came from, just sequence it and look for that code.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-...

Here's a link to OSSI — the Open Source Seed Initiative ⌘ http://www.opensourceseedinitiative.org/

This is an example of a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. Its a "hardware solution" to a problem that at its root is a cultural assumption. The people who developed these seeds apparently needed to go the 'long way around' just to circumvent a preexisting absurdity with something as marginally absurd in hopes of incremental gains.

It's like fighting stupid with stupid where whoever is the most clever at it "wins".

I'm wondering if it is possible to "GPL" open-source seeds to nullify the Monsanto round-up ready canola seed issues. i.e. Imagine a thought experiment whereby GPLed seeds somehow make it into Monsanto's seed stock and over many generations ends up in a significant percentage of Monsanto seed.

Monsanto will cross-breed these immediately, right? :-D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com