Introduction
In France, in 1882, there was a discovery so dramatic that crop scientists have been looking for comparable successes ever since. This discovery was the first fungicide, called Bordeaux mixture, which saved the French wine industry from absolute ruin, and also provided a complete protection of the potato crop from blight. Twelve years later, Mendel's laws of inheritance were recognised, and they were a major scientific breakthrough. They converted plant breeders from many-gene to single-gene breeding techniques. Forty years later still, DDT was discovered, and this discovery was as dramatic as that of Bordeaux mixture. This insecticide provided a complete control of the Colorado potato beetle, as well as many other insect pests.
These discoveries were collectively responsible for an inappropriate approach to potato breeding during the past 120 years, and this has led to a severe vertifolia effect. As a consequence, most modern cultivars of potato are very susceptible to many species of parasite. (Insect parasites are usually called pests, and most other parasites are called pathogens, which cause diseases). This is why potato cultivation is now so expensive, requiring costly seed tubers certified free from tuber-borne diseases, and repeated, expensive, and dangerous spraying with insecticides and fungicides. This situation can be remedied, and this remedy is most likely to be achieved by amateur breeders who are unaffected by a mindset that developed within crop science, following the discoveries of Bordeaux mixture, Mendel's laws of inheritance, and DDT.
Farmers have been breeding crops for some 9,000 years using mainly quantitative assessments (i.e., differences in degree) of yield, quality, and pest and disease resistance. The effect of the new scientific discoveries was to convert many crop scientists to qualitative (i.e., differences in kind) assessments of these parameters. This has proved a tragic mistake. Readers wanting to know more about this topic should see Return to Resistance (available as a free download at www.sharebooks.ca).
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