Darwinian Agriculture

Author : R. Ford Denison
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691173761
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Darwinian Agriculture written by R. Ford Denison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As human populations grow and resources are depleted, agriculture will need to use land, water, and other resources more efficiently and without sacrificing long-term sustainability. Darwinian Agriculture presents an entirely new approach to these challenges, one that draws on the principles of evolution and natural selection. R. Ford Denison shows how both biotechnology and traditional plant breeding can use Darwinian insights to identify promising routes for crop genetic improvement and avoid costly dead ends. Denison explains why plant traits that have been genetically optimized by individual selection--such as photosynthesis and drought tolerance--are bad candidates for genetic improvement. Traits like plant height and leaf angle, which determine the collective performance of plant communities, offer more room for improvement. Agriculturalists can also benefit from more sophisticated comparisons among natural communities and from the study of wild species in the landscapes where they evolved. Darwinian Agriculture reveals why it is sometimes better to slow or even reverse evolutionary trends when they are inconsistent with our present goals, and how we can glean new ideas from natural selection's marvelous innovations in wild species.

Author : R. Weikart
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137109866
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Darwin to Hitler written by R. Weikart and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary 'fitness' (especially intelligence and health) to the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and racial extermination. This was especially important in Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism.

Author : Erasmus Darwin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 620 pages
Book Rating : 4.7I/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Phytologia written by Erasmus Darwin and published by . This book was released on 1800 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : David Rindos
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origins of Agriculture written by David Rindos and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Domestikation - Kulturpflanzenphylogenie allg. - Sippenbildung und Evolution - Neolithikum - Naher Osten.

Author : David Rindos
Publisher : Academic Press
ISBN 13 : 148326954X
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origins of Agriculture written by David Rindos and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Origins of Agriculture: An Evolutionary Perspective presents an alternative approach to understanding cultural variation and change. It aims to demonstrate that domestication and the origin of agricultural systems are best understood by attempting to explicate the evolutionary forces that affected that development of domesticates and agricultural systems. The book begins by discussing cultural change, the domestication of plants, and the origin of agricultural systems in the most general of terms. It considers Darwinism in some depth, concentrating on the relationship between natural selection and cultural change. Subsequent chapters examine the world of domestication and agriculture and present a series of concepts that may permit a more natural explanation for these processes. These include concepts such as incidental domestication, specialized domestication, and agricultural domestication. The final two chapters present models for the origin and spread of agricultural systems based upon Darwinian evolutionary theory.

Author : Jonathan Silvertown
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022624539X
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dinner with Darwin written by Jonathan Silvertown and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do eggs, flour, and milk have in common? They form the basis of crepes of course, but they also each have an evolutionary purpose. Eggs, seeds (from which flour is derived by grinding) and milk are each designed by evolution to nourish offspring. Everything we eat has an evolutionary history. Grocery shelves and restaurant menus are bounteous evidence of evolution at work, though the label on the poultry will not remind us of this with a Jurassic sell-by date, nor will the signs in the produce aisle betray the fact that corn has a 5,000 year history of artificial selection by pre-Colombian Americans. Any shopping list, each recipe, every menu and all ingredients can be used to create culinary and gastronomic magic, but can also each tell a story about natural selection, and its influence on our plates--and palates. Join in for multiple courses, for a tour of evolutionary gastronomy that helps us understand the shape of our diets, and the trajectories of the foods that have been central to them over centuries--from spirits to spices. This literary repast also looks at the science of our interaction with foods and cooking--the sights, the smells, the tastes. The menu has its eclectic components, just as any chef is entitled. But while it is not a comprehensive work which might risk gluttony, this is more than an amuse bouche, and will leave every reader hungry for more.

Author : Colin Tudge
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300080247
Total Pages : 74 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers written by Colin Tudge and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revolution was not the beginning of agriculture but the beginning of agriculture on a large scale, in one place, with refined tools. Tudge offers a persuasive hypothesis about a puzzling epoch, along the way providing new insights into the Pleistocene overkill, the demise of the Neanderthals, the location of the biblical Eden, and much more."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108470971
Total Pages : 575 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture written by Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Author : Sushma Naithani
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book History and Science of Cultivated Plants written by Sushma Naithani and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Paul A. Elliott
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 178327610X
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Erasmus Darwin's Gardens written by Paul A. Elliott and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first full study of Erasmus Darwin's gardening, horticulture and agriculture shows he was as keen a nature enthusiast as his grandson Charles, and demonstrates the ways in which his landscape experiences transformed his understanding of nature.