*Please note new venue*
Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM)
University of Manchester
Seminar, Tuesday 4 February 2014, 16:00-17:30
Room 2.217, University Place, 178-186 Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
Dr. Helen Curry (University of Cambridge)
Endangered Crops: Conservation Genetics and Agricultural Crisis in the United States, 1950-1975
This talk will address the intertwined history of two activities that are often seen to be at odds with one another: globalized industrial agriculture and biodiversity conservation. In particular, it will consider the history of efforts made to preserve genetic diversity in maize (corn) types and to save its wild relatives from extinction. In the late 1930s and 1940s, the rapid spread of improved agricultural corn varieties, especially hybrids, sparked concerns about the loss of many thousands of "traditional" or "indigenous" types of maize across the Americas. As breeders well knew, these long-cultivated types might be useful to plant breeders in need of genes for disease resistance or other desirable traits. Such worries eventually spurred a massive multi-year collection and preservation program that stretched from Chile to Canada in the late-1950s. The ideas and collections produced through this program, and others like it, proved important both to the continued growth of global industrial agriculture and to the development of the field of conservation biology.
All are welcome. Please feel free pass this list on to interested colleagues.
Event co-organized by Niki Vermeulen and Ray Macauley
http://www.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/newsandevents/seminars/chstm
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