Stalking Wild Maize: Taxonomy, Plant Exploration, and the Search for Corn's Origins in South America.

In the twentieth century, plant explorers in many countries were enlisted in the assembly of seed and plant collections that brought together hundreds and sometimes thousands of varieties of the same crop species. These collections were, and are, understood chiefly as the foundations for effective plant breeding. However, like other biological collections, crop seed collections were also essential tools of taxonomy: their study was both conditioned by and productive of evolutionary narratives about plant cultures and human natures. This crop taxonomic enterprise has been subject to far less scrutiny than its agronomic counterpart. In this article, I redress that imbalance through an account of a search for Zea mays (maize or corn) and its wild relatives in South America in the 1940s. As I show, developing taxonomies of cultivated plant species, and especially accounting for distinct local forms of these crop plants, was a profoundly interdisciplinary enterprise. It was also a project conditioned by researchers' expectations of the places, peoples, and plants they would encounter. The taxonomy of maize, like other taxonomic enterprises, emerged as a mirror of those who taxonomized.

Diversifying Description: Sweet Potato Science and International Agricultural Research after the Green Revolution.

The organization of sweet potato research across global regions began in earnest in the 1980s. Leading international institutions, notably CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) recognized the potential for science-driven development of a "neglected" crop. Sweet potato was second only to potato in root crop cultivation worldwide and the top tuber in Asia yet had not been subject to the internationally coordinated research that its importance merited. In this paper, I explore how scientists involved in sweet potato research attempted to respond to the call for new international research and development efforts while avoiding the limitations of predecessor programs associated with the Green Revolution. I highlight the challenges inherent in this work by focusing on ambitions for-and challenges to-providing standardized information about samples of varieties used in research and entered into genebank collections. As scientists and institutions grappled with critiques of the top-down model of development, many sought to address these through more inclusive research practices. As I show, accommodating diversity in crops and among cultivators and cultures entailed costs that ultimately limited the longevity and effectiveness of some enterprises that sought to maximize inclusivity.

Breeding confusion: hybrid seeds and histories of agriculture.

Since the 1970s 'hybrid seeds' have been linked to many perceived perils of industrialized agriculture. This essay revisits the scholarship that helped produce a dominant critical assessment of hybrid seeds, situating its emergence in a series of events and interventions of the late twentieth century. It explores how the singular history of F1 hybrid corn inflected understandings of crop breeding and seed production in general, contributing to effective political mobilization against agroindustry as well as lasting confusion about the promises and pitfalls of distinct approaches to crop development and the nature of hybrid seeds.

Hybrid Seeds in History and Historiography.

Accounts of twentieth-century agricultural industrialization in the United States and beyond often center the production and distribution of commercial F1 hybrid seed as a pivotal development. The commercialization of hybrid corn seed in the 1930s was initially heralded as a science-driven advance in agricultural productivity. However, since the 1970s "hybrid seed" has 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 (GM) varieties for much the same reason. This essay revisits the scholarship that helped produce this understanding of hybrid seed. 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 seed.

Turning promise into practice: Crop biotechnology for increasing genetic diversity and climate resilience.

As climate change increasingly threatens agricultural production, expanding genetic diversity in crops is an important strategy for climate resilience in many agricultural contexts. In this Essay, we explore the potential of crop biotechnology to contribute to this diversification, especially in industrialized systems, by using historical perspectives to frame the current dialogue surrounding recent innovations in gene editing. We unearth comments about the possibility of enhancing crop diversity made by ambitious scientists in the early days of recombinant DNA and follow the implementation of this technology, which has not generated the diversification some anticipated. We then turn to recent claims about the promise of gene editing tools with respect to this same goal. We encourage researchers and other stakeholders to engage in activities beyond the laboratory if they hope to see what is technologically possible translated into practice at this critical point in agricultural transformation.

The history of seed banking and the hazards of backup.

Seeds and other plant materials in seed and gene bank collections are rarely considered adequately conserved today unless genetically identical duplicate samples have been created and safely stored elsewhere. This paper explores the history of seed banking to understand how, why and with what consequences copying collections came to occupy this central place. It highlights a shift in the guiding metaphor for long-term preservation of seed collections, from banking to backup. To understand the causes and consequences of this shift in metaphor, the paper traces the intertwined histories of the central long-term seed storage facility of the United States (opened in 1958) and the international seed conservation system into which that facility was integrated in the 1970s. This account reveals how changing conceptions of security, linked to changing economic, political and technological circumstances, transformed both the guiding metaphors and the practices of seed conservation in these institutions. Early instantiations of long-term cold storage facilities vested security in robust infrastructures and the capacities of professional staff; between the 1960s and 1990s, this configuration gave way to one in which security was situated in copies rather than capacities. This observation ultimately raises questions about the security promised and achieved through present-day infrastructures for crop genetic resources conservation.

Crop genetic erosion: understanding and responding to loss of crop diversity.

Crop diversity underpins the productivity, resilience and adaptive capacity of agriculture. Loss of this diversity, termed crop genetic erosion, is therefore concerning. While alarms regarding evident declines in crop diversity have been raised for over a century, the magnitude, trajectory, drivers and significance of these losses remain insufficiently understood. We outline the various definitions, measurements, scales and sources of information on crop genetic erosion. We then provide a synthesis of evidence regarding changes in the diversity of traditional crop landraces on farms, modern crop cultivars in agriculture, crop wild relatives in their natural habitats and crop genetic resources held in conservation repositories. This evidence indicates that marked losses, but also maintenance and increases in diversity, have occurred in all these contexts, the extent depending on species, taxonomic and geographic scale, and region, as well as analytical approach. We discuss steps needed to further advance knowledge around the agricultural and societal significance, as well as conservation implications, of crop genetic erosion. Finally, we propose actions to mitigate, stem and reverse further losses of crop diversity.

From bean collection to seed bank: transformations in heirloom vegetable conservation, 1970-1985.

In 1975, the Missouri homesteaders Kent and Diane Ott Whealy launched True Seed Exchange (later Seed Savers Exchange), a network of 'serious gardeners' interested in growing and conserving heirloom and other hard-to-find plant varieties, especially vegetables. In its earliest years, the organization pursued its conservation mission through member-led exchange and cultivation, seeing members' gardens and seed collections as the best means of ensuring that heirloom varieties remained both extant and available to growers. Beginning in 1981, however, Kent Whealy began to develop a central seed repository. As I discuss in this paper, the development of this central collection was motivated in part by concerns about the precariousness of very large individual collections, the maintenance of which was too demanding to entrust to most growers. Although state-run institutions were better positioned to take on large collections, they were nonetheless unsuitable stewards because they placed limits on access. For seed savers, loss of access to varieties via their accession into a state collection could be as much an ending for treasured collections as total physical loss, as it did not necessarily enable continued cultivation. As I show here, these imagined endings inspired the adoption of a new set of conservation practices that replicated those seen in the formal genetic conservation sector, including seed banking, cold storage and safety duplication.

Gene Banks, Seed Libraries, and Vegetable Sanctuaries: The Cultivation and Conservation of Heritage Vegetables in Britain, 1970-1985.

Individual seed saving and exchange are considered important components of contemporary efforts to conserve crop genetic diversity that ramify at local, regional, and global scales. Yet the very fact that the contributions of these activities to conservation need to be made explicit by seed savers and those who study them indicates that the practices of seed saving and exchange may not immediately be recognized as conservation-oriented activities. This article investigates why and how individual seed saving came to be aligned with a broader conservation agenda in Britain through a historical examination of the promotion of seed saving by the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) in the 1970s and 1980s. It demonstrates how several HDRA initiatives that aimed to preserve vegetable diversity also re-inscribed British gardeners' ordinary labor as conservation work. This historical study complements sociological and ethnographic studies, highlighting the role of a prominent organization in creating pathways for individuals to engage in local, national, and international conservation through seed saving. It also serves as a reminder that the connections between these activities had to be made explicit-that is, that there was (and is) work involved in connecting individual acts of seed saving to conservation outcomes at different scales.

From working collections to the World Germplasm Project: agricultural modernization and genetic conservation at the Rockefeller Foundation.

This paper charts the history of the Rockefeller Foundation's participation in the collection and long-term preservation of genetic diversity in crop plants from the 1940s through the 1970s. In the decades following the launch of its agricultural program in Mexico in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation figured prominently in the creation of world collections of key economic crops. Through the efforts of its administrators and staff, the foundation subsequently parlayed this experience into a leadership role in international efforts to conserve so-called plant genetic resources. Previous accounts of the Rockefeller Foundation's interventions in international agricultural development have focused on the outcomes prioritized by foundation staff and administrators as they launched assistance programs and especially their characterization of the peoples and "problems" they encountered abroad. This paper highlights instead how foundation administrators and staff responded to a newly emergent international agricultural concern-the loss of crop genetic diversity. Charting the foundation's responses to this concern, which developed only after agricultural modernization had begun and was understood to be produced by the successes of the foundation's own agricultural assistance programs, allows for greater interrogation of how the foundation understood and projected its central position in international agricultural research activities by the 1970s.