Re: HYB:Pod parents (care and feeding)

christian foster <flatnflashy@yahoo.com> wrote:
  Hmm, spontaneous abortions do occur, but there are drug addicts out there who's bodys are probably poorly nourished... and they don't always abort... some maybe even go full term (?)
   
  Quite true.
  But people in medicine, both with animals and people, know there is a high correlation between fertility and nutrition.  
  To much isn't as bad as too little, optimum for fertity is more than optimum for health.
  And work on crop plants shows generally that lack of good plant nutrition reduces fertility and germination of the seeds.
  The degree of the correlation varies greatly with the species.
  Plants with storage organs may not show much, or any, affect of lacking good nutrition for a short time.  This group could include iris
  Much of the green revolution was adapting crop species to higher nutrition levels than the crop was used to.  
  Old corn varieties generally don't take up nitrogen during the whole season.  High-yielding corn hybrids do take in nitrigen as long as it is availible.
  Old wheat varieties tend to to respond to high nitrigen levels by growing tall with weak stems and falling over.  Modern high-yielding wheats use the nitrogen in making grain, not stem.
  Iris breeders have selected somewhat for such response to improved growing conditions.  Yet comparing old varieties growing in old cemetaries with newer varieties growing in the best gardens, does not show a comparible improvement.  I attribute this relative lack of progress to iris breeders not having had hundreds of thousands of breeders with billions of dollors over the last century.
  Iris breeders have done pretty well with what they have had.  But greater things are yet to come.
  Walter.
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