Although the seed of most crops has already been sown worldwide, wild and exotic species provide insurance and new genes to regenerate cultivars. Commercial crops are many times as vulnerable to pests and disease as their wild brethren, and plant biologists are ever watchful for new species that confer resistance, higher productivity, or useful traits such as tolerance to high salinity in water.
Jack Kloppenburg, assistant professor of rural sociology at the University of Wisconsin, has enlightened the North-South debate with an analysis of where plant species originated. In general, the North is indeed “gene-poor” and the South “gene-rich”. But no region is genetically independent, and no region can afford to isolate itself through a “genetic OPEC”, an option some gene-rich counties are considering.
