First things first

[Kveldulf]

Its been my lay assumption that all things carried all possible outcomes inside them and that expression of these outcomes was dependent on whatever environmental triggers came about. As i’m writing this i realize that doesn’t really account for survival of the fittest and, well, any other observable fact, i mean, we wouldn’t have to worry about entropy or bottlenecking, etc then. It’s confusing to me though because if, “in a beginning” (no matter worldview) it starts with 2, they had to have had all things contained within them to get us to today, if that makes sense. Seems to me there must have been a much higher rate of active natural selection then there is now. So genetic possibilities would, over time flow like this<>. Where, sometime in history genetic expression (or better: flexiblity of adaptation) reached a peak and then started closing in up to now.
As i said, lay assumptions. Can someone edgykate me and shed my ignorance. Or at lesst point me towards a good simplified read on the the subject of genetics as it pertains to plant life. Seems to me without a real grasp of this my breeding wouldn’t consist of much more than following a recipe out of a book. I always wanna know the why’s of anything i get into. Hopefully someone here can decipher my tryptaddled understanding of things.

 

[Creeperpark]

Its been my lay assumption that all things carried all possible outcomes inside them and that expression of these outcomes was dependent on whatever environmental triggers came about. As i’m writing this i realize that doesn’t really account for survival of the fittest and, well, any other observable fact, i mean, we wouldn’t have to worry about entropy or bottlenecking, etc then. It’s confusing to me though because if, “in a beginning” (no matter worldview) it starts with 2, they had to have had all things contained within them to get us to today, if that makes sense. Seems to me there must have been a much higher rate of active natural selection then there is now. So genetic possibilities would, over time flow like this<>. Where, sometime in history genetic expression (or better: flexiblity of adaptation) reached a peak and then started closing in up to now.
As i said, lay assumptions. Can someone edgykate me and shed my ignorance. Or at lesst point me towards a good simplified read on the the subject of genetics as it pertains to plant life. Seems to me without a real grasp of this my breeding wouldn’t consist of much more than following a recipe out of a book. I always wanna know the why’s of anything i get into. Hopefully someone here can decipher my tryptaddled understanding of things.

Thank you for the good post friend. All things exist due to conditions and not in and of itself. Nothing happens without falling into the law of dependent origination. Everything comes from causes. If you change the cause you change the existence. If xxxx happens then ---- rises out of the causes. So ---- can not be without xxxx. Period. The same goes for breeding or anything in existence.

 

[Kveldulf]

Thanks for the response. How fitting a buddhist answer in response to my choice of wording.
So what i gleaned from a little searching of the term, but will surely need to meditate further on its implications, is that genetic traits arise in response to outward, in this case environmental stimuli. This could still imply that any individual plant has the innate ability within to present whatever traits necessary to survive/thrive in response. I was reading in another unrelated thread a little snippet that sparked my head a little.

……So through breeding under low light I would imagine the cultivar would adapt over many years or decades.

In my area ditchweed left to repopulate eventually regresses to nothing more than low cannabinoid hemp. Some do better than others. So i do get that adaptation is still active. It has less need for defensive cannabinoid production as the light is far less intense than its original environment.
despite my original statement i guess i do see that not every individual plant can do all things. Just the fact that a larger population can eventually adapt or die out still trips me up. My mind wants to say then that somewhere locked in the genome is the ability to respond to anything but for some reason only certain plants eventually do (why only some?) and carry on the line.
Recently, searching out wild and landrace varieties to preserve( my ultimate goal) i learned that wild populations have such diversity that the traits many of us take for granted in the west are hard sought over many generations of selection. Also that incessant selection stabilizes but narrows traits. So does this mean culled traits are lost forever or simply shut off/locked away in the genome. Actually i think the answer to this may help put some the rest into perspective.
In all this i may be answering some of my own questions. I’ve only recently even thought about these things and i guess am more trying to piece it all together in a linear fashion. Linear isnt really how my brain works unless forced and bouncing/ brainstorming ideas can help.