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| LUTHER BURBANK |
Luther Burbank grew up on a farm within the US.
Although he went only to secondary school, he read Charles Darwin's ideas
about how living things change over time. Burbank wanted to understand why
different plants have different kinds of fruit and flowers and how they might
be changed to grow better ones.
In the 1870s most people thought it wasn't possible to make new kinds
of plants. But Burbank surprised them by creating hundreds of new varieties,
including a white blackberry that was so clear, its seeds could be seen through
its skin. Burbank grew a tomato on a potato vine and referred to as it a 'pomato'.
He combined a plum tree and an apricot tree to create a replacement fruit
referred a 'plumcot'.
Burbank produced many plants by 'grafting'. He took a small twig
from one plant and put it into a cut he made on a different plant. The plant
with roots controlled the dimensions of the new plant, whereas the twig grew
into branches with flowers and fruit. Typically he make completely
new types of plants by cross-pollination. He did this by putting spore from the
flowers of 1 sort of plant onto the sticky a part of the flowers of another
sort of plant.
Getting the new plants he needed wasn't easy. The white blackberry
took Burbank 65,000 attempts to get it right. And he spent eight years
cross-pollinating different types of daisy to turn a small yellowish daisy into
a snow-white flower with a yellow center. The result was the noted composite.
Burbank's work produced many useful plants. And his experiments
added greatly to the understanding of how features pass from parents to
offspring.
Getting the new plants he needed wasn't easy. The white blackberry took Burbank 65,000 attempts to get it right. And he spent eight years cross-pollinating different types of daisy to turn a small yellowish daisy into a snow-white flower with a yellow center. The result was the noted composite.
Burbank's work produced many useful plants. And his experiments added greatly to the understanding of how features pass from parents to offspring.
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