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Article ID: CBB907533787

Hybrid Seeds in History and Historiography (2022)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 113
Issue: 3
Pages: 610-617
Publication date: 2022
Language: English

URI: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721075

DOI: 10.1086/721075

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Historiography History of technology, as a discipline Technology and industry Agricultural technology Corn Genetically modified foods (GMO) Seeds Seed industry and trade Industrial agriculture 21st century 20th century United States

Accounts of twentieth-century agricultural industrialization in the United States and beyond often center the production and distribution of commercial F1 hybrid seeds as a pivotal development. The commercialization of hybrid corn seeds in the 1930s was initially heralded as a science-driven advance in agricultural productivity. However, since the 1970s “hybrid seeds” have been linked to many perceived perils attendant on industrialized agriculture, from the undermining of farmers’ independence to the diminishment of crop genetic diversity to the consolidation of corporate control over the global food system. First grouped with the semidwarf varieties of the Green Revolution to emblematize capital- and chemical-intensive agriculture, hybrids are today often lumped together with genetically modified varieties for much the same reason. This essay revisits the scholarship that helped produce this understanding of hybrid seeds. It explores how and why the singular history of hybrid corn inflected understandings of crop breeding and seed production in general, contributing to lasting confusion about the promises and pitfalls of distinct approaches to crop development and the nature of hybrid seeds.

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Article Prakash Kumar (2022) Introduction: Seeds and the History of Science. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 581-587). unapi

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