Is It Possible To Develop Disease- and Insect-Resistant Plants By Seed-Saving?
Organic growers and others who want to reduce their use of pesticides should have a preference for plants that are resistant to diseases and insects. How did farmers manage before pesticides became available? Did they accept huge crop losses as a cost of doing business? Surely crop losses to disease and insects couldnt have been so huge, otherwise farming wouldnt have developed as an economic endeavor. Farmers used rotation of crops and picking by hand to deal with disease and insects to be sure, but perhaps it was seed saving that produced the added edge of disease- and insect-resistant plants. Farmers always saved seed for next years crop. Obviously they didnt save seeds from plants that had succumbed to disease or insect attack. They save seed from their healthiest and most robust plants as any seed saver does. The gene pool of each plant species has in it genes for resistance to many of the diseases that attack that species and genes for the production of toxins that repel many of
