Re: Survivors and hybridizers an experiment

 

Because I am optimist and I believe that people can work together let me describe an experiment that would have at least a minimal amount of scientific credibility in determining resistance to soft rot. In theory there are enough people on this robin to accomplish this experiment.

First let me explain that one always needs enough replications of any question that the results have some validity. The pharmaceutical companies generally would never even try to represent data unless it have at a minimum 18 replications. They don?t like paying for more than they have to so some studies are done with this least number of samples. Of course to have any real confidence studies with over a thousand replications are really required. But let us assume that we might find out something by only 18.

Next we must have a control so lets say we want to evaluate cultvar #1. We would have to compare it to another cultivar that we suspect is more resistant (cultivar #2). Now eighteen people would have to grow both under the same conditions. Assuming we could infect both plants with soft rot we would then record how each did.

If neither developed soft rot we still would not know anything. Only if the majority of one clone succumbed to soft rot could we conclude that one was more resistant than another.

Sadly there are probably enough people out there to conduct this experiment but my cynical nature tends to believe that you would not find 18 people that would agree to conduct this experiment and follow through with the results. One of the values of belonging to plant societies is that these type of things are possible but sadly very seldom are people willing to work together to achieve these common benefits.

 


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