> If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already be doing it.
I find this theoretical comment so strange because it completely contradicts our experimental knowledge of plants.
Humans been selectively breeding plants for food for thousands of years. Corn that was selectively bred in the Americas looks and functions almost nothing like its wild ancestors. But - by this theoretical argument - this selective breeding shouldn't have worked! If making the plant more food-efficient was possible the corn "would already be doing it".
Corn's natural purpose is not to provide food. That which most successfully germinates and survives in the particular growing conditions in the wild will prevail, not that which is most likely to be consumed.
> if you plant that corn back in it's original environment it would eventually revert back to the wild type
You 100% will not get teosinte from unattended corn. They're genetically so different after thousands of years of agriculture that there's no turning back the clock. It would probably occupy a fairly different niche if it were left alone.
When I said wild type I didn't mean ancestral wild type.
It might not revert to teosinte (maybe how much time have you got?) but it also wouldn't stay as the corn we are used to with eight inch corn cobs either.
But my main point stands. Just because we were able to selectively breed something doesn't mean we 'improved it' we improved it for very specific purposes and to be grown with additional inputs in poor soil.
And we also bred it to match our industrial processes. Etc...
A wild plant wouldn't care about any of that, and it would quickly morph into something that exchanges nutrients with other plant in a community, not in neat rows of green desert.
It's so genetically different that it definitely would not. But honestly who cares what it would do if you just tossed out some seed and walked away?
> Just because we were able to selectively breed something doesn't mean we 'improved it' we improved it for very specific purposes
Definitionally that is an improvement. What are you trying to say here?
Also corn was selectively bred for thousands of years to grow in relatively poor soil, it just doesn't fix nitrogen.
> A wild plant wouldn't care about any of that, and it would quickly morph into something that exchanges nutrients with other plant in a community
You can already plant beans with corn to fix nitrogen and you don't need to fertilize, you just get lower yields per acre. Not all plants share nutrients like that, and certainly not all of the plants we might want to eat.
This line of thinking totally ignores how much food we're now able to grow on so little land. Obviously we could make better use of cover crops, advancements in no til planting, drip irrigation, and managing soil health but we've done something really amazing. For the first time in human history, there's plenty of food for everyone year after year.
I find this theoretical comment so strange because it completely contradicts our experimental knowledge of plants.
Humans been selectively breeding plants for food for thousands of years. Corn that was selectively bred in the Americas looks and functions almost nothing like its wild ancestors. But - by this theoretical argument - this selective breeding shouldn't have worked! If making the plant more food-efficient was possible the corn "would already be doing it".