Hybrid
The History and Science of Plant Breeding
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Acknowledgments
A Note on Names
Introduction
Part One
From the Birth of Agriculture to the Birth of Genetics
One. Origins: The Domestication of Plants
Two. Landraces: Bedrock of Traditional Agriculture
Three. “Improvement”: The Agricultural Revolution
Four. Vegetable Mules: The Beginnings of Deliberate Breeding
Five. Empire: Globalization in Earnest
Six. Breakthrough: Gregor Mendel
Seven. Germination: Mendelism and Plant Breeding in the Early Twentieth Century
Eight. Luther Burbank: Miracle Worker or Charlatan?
Nine. “Let History Judge”: Plant Breeding and Politics in the USSR
Part Two
Flowering of a Technology
Ten. Hybrid! Corn and the Brave New World of F1 Hybridization
Eleven. Cornucopia: Genetics Opens up the Horn of Plenty
Twelve. Green Revolution: Can Plant Breeding Feed the World?
Thirteen. Ornament: Furnishing Our Gardens
Fourteen. Ownership and Diversity: Issues of Property Rights over Plant Genetic Resources
Fifteen. Conclusions
Technical Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Works Cited and Consulted
Index
"Shoppers who shun genetically modified foods in favor of 'natural' fruits and veggies may be in for a surprise. Horticulturalist Kingsbury's lively history documents the history of human meddling with plant genes since the dawn of agriculture."
"The reason you and billions of other people will eat today is a century-long effort to increase the yield of crop plants. Hybrid tells the story of the quiet heroes behind this triumph. Noel Kingsbury has written a fantastic history of a subject that should become much better known."
“In plant breeding, just as in evolution, genetic variety is the raw material of success. Hybrid is the story of how the genes that make a fat corn cob, a luscious apple, a brilliantly orange carrot or a high yielding strain of rice have traveled by serpentine paths to reach the genomes of the crops that we so depend on and yet so take for granted. In Hybrid we learn that there was a green revolution in eleventh-century China when a visionary emperor imported new strains of rice from Indochina; how working men in nineteenth-century Britain made a sport of competitive gooseberry breeding, and how a German doctor discovered hybrid vigor in plants. Hybrid the book displays, like hybrids themselves, all the marvelous fruit of miscellany.”
“A magnificent achievement—Kingsbury tells this gripping story, with a large cast of characters across the entire span of human civilization, with wit, passion, and erudition.”
“Thoughtful, well researched and refreshingly broad in scope, Noel Kingsbury’s Hybrid took me out of my immediate area of expertise (plants and garden history) and opened my eyes to the way previously unsung plant breeders have transformed societies. Accessible to specialists and non-specialists, it should be essential reading for anyone wishing to take an informed view on the future direction of biotechnology.”
Biological Sciences: Botany | Natural History
Economics and Business: Economics--Agriculture and Natural Resources
History: History of Technology
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