Changing into Genes that Fit

This entry is about survival of the fittest and variability in genes.

A while ago I came to the realization that 1. Plant offspring are very diverse, and 2. Some plants are just not fitted for survival.

This is how it happened:

A few weeks ago, I lost a bean plant that was the offspring of another bean plant that died. They both looked very unhealthy. I was at first sad that the offspring bean died.

In the past, I have grown things on an individual basis (a few beans, a few avocados). With the growing of many tomatoes and many peppers, and now many avocados, I was able to see the differences in health among plants.

The first thing I noticed was that one of the avocado plants that sprouted didn't look good. Its leaves were pale and drooped, and soon started to brown at the tips (like some of the other avocado plants). What distinguished this plant was that the browning spread throughout the leaves, even until one of the leaves became completely dark and wilted. The conditions that I was growing this one were identical to the others' conditions. The conclusion I drew was that this avocado was simply of bad genetic material.

Shortly after, I started noticing that the tomatoes also varied in their healths. Some of them grew to be large but then died, even though they are side-by-side with sibling tomatoes, in the same conditions.
Similarly, all of the pepper plants came from the same parent plant, and are grown in identical conditions. Despite this, some of the pepper plants look pretty bad, while others look good. I concluded from this that there is a lot of variability in the genes of new plants; on average they resemble the parent plant, but they will be distributed in all directions of it.

The benefit of the variability is that it's probably not too difficult to engineer plants, especially if they have short life cycles.

Also, I don't feel as bad when I lose plants as I once did. My reason is that the plant is not suited for survival, and its death entails an improvement of the gene pool.

From the 20 strawberry plants that I had a few weeks ago, only 2 survived (although a third one just sprouted a few days ago). This is a good thing, because if the two plants survive and reproduce, their offspring will be healthier.



The avocado pit that broke in half and sprouted a while ago is developing interestingly. It seems that the side of the stem that's supported by a pit is developing faster than the side of the stem that has no pit under it. I am curious to see how this develops. If the problem corrects itself then it might actually be in the avocado's best interest to be broken in half and planted separately. That way, two plants can develop instead of just one.

Appaloosa

After weeks of not posting, I have so much to show and tell that I have to break it down into two entries.

First, the apple progress. The two apple seeds that I put in the soil are, like the peach and cherry pits, unresponsive. I am not sure whether they are even alive but, nevertheless, I will be patient. Sometimes seeds sprout really late.
On the bright side, the apple that germinated is thriving. I took a picture of it every day for the past 3 weeks, and compiled the pictures into two animations. The first one is from the past 18 days, and the second one is from the past 13 days.

I came to a realization about apples a few months ago (when I got the apple seeds) that I'd like to share. I was in Almaty, Kazakhstan back then, and observed two things about the city. First, I was told that the city used to have apples that were legendary in size, color, and scent. An old lady described two apples as weighing a kilogram (about one pound per apple), with a scent that was strong enough to make the entire apartment smell like apples. (Sadly, the apple trees were all cut down during the city's expansion). Second, the area is known for its horses. The entire culture is based on them, and, not surprisingly, the people were the first in the world to domesticate them. So, what do horses and apples have to do with each other? Here's the logic: Horses like to eat apples because they are high in energy and horses like to run. Apples, like all plants, like to occupy as much space as possible, and therefore prefer to be spread out. Apple seeds survive and, in fact, germinate more easily when they pass through horses' digestive systems. We have a fantastic symbiotic relationship. Apple trees produce apples that are large and easy to spot, and horses eat them and spread their seeds far and wide. In time, the horses spread apple seeds from apples that are larger, brighter, and stronger in scent, eventually causing Almaty to have legendary apples.

I would like to bring back the Almaty apple. Unfortunately, since it takes at least ten years for apple trees to start producing fruit, breeding such an apple would take a lifetime. The bright side of this is that, as I will talk about in the next entry, I recently came to the realization that plants' offspring can be pretty different from one another. This variation would mean fewer steps in breeding apple trees, making the legendary apple closer to hand.

Infantile Inflictions

Yesterday morning one of the apple seeds sprouted out of the soil. Sadly, while I was taking pictures of it this morning, I dropped its container from five feet and a bunch of the soil and the seed came out. Fortunately, since the soil is so soft and the seed is still so young, I was able to spear its root back into the ground. Hopefully it'll be okay, but I'm worried that the part that I speared into the soil was only half of the root, and the rest broke off in the ground. The pictures are from last night, this morning, and this morning after I put it back in the ground.

The strawberries are looking good. I think there are more than fifteen now (last time I counted there were over 20, but a few of them looked bad). A big problem I have is with watering them. Even the equivalent of one fat well-placed raindrop pummels them to the ground. A tiny splash of water is enough to rip the plants from their roots. Their stems are a bit wider than a hair. I found that the only way to water them is by taking a drop of water on my fingertips and placing it at their bases. A spray bottle would probably work too, but I don't have one. Hopefully they'll grow up soon, so that I can be less careful with them.

There are pictures of avocado plant tips. They are all from different plants, but they show the process of an avocado sprouted new leaves.