One occupation I have come to respect
is that of the funeral home owner; it’s one
of those jobs that takes very special people.
When you are in need of their services – and
we all will at some point – it is such a comfort
to know and trust the funeral home
that will be seeing to your loved ones’ service
and interment.
In our area, at the end of the graveside
portion of a funeral, you might hear our local
funeral home owner say in a soft and
comforting voice to the grieving family,
“We’ve come as far as we can go.” It’s his
way of saying this is as far as you can accompany
your loved one.
Although the context is very different, I thought of that phrase while working
on the article, “A New Era In Peanut Breeding,” which can be found on
page 14. The truth is that we had come as far as we could go with conventional
breeding, and although newer, higher-yielding, more disease-resistant
varieties were being released every few years, the time factor and incremental
gains made by what is now outdated breeding efforts was putting the industry
as a whole behind.
On a dollar-value-per-acre basis, peanuts were often uncompetitive when
compared to crops such as cotton and corn. New technology and genomic discoveries
had completely changed crop breeding programs. It is now known
that information gained from crop genome sequencing enables giant leaps in
the ability to deliver improved varieties in a timely manner. The peanut industry
had to get on board, making a major investment, or resign ourselves
to being left further behind. As we have done in the past, the industry pulled
together to not only fund this work, but also to do much of this work.
With complete and timely funding, the consortium of peanut researchers
is confident that all Peanut Genome Project Research Components will be
achieved by the end of 2016. As discoveries are made throughout the project,
the results will be made available to all breeders. The result of this investment
will be a real “game-changer” in the industry and will get us much
further toward being competitive with other crops. PG |
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