Field of Science

Another frightening news article about wine grapes

To heck with terrorism; global warming is no worry; the world won't end this May 21st, but wine grapes are in jeopardy! Oh, no! But it's so, and for a news article this one in the New York Times is pretty good so one suspects the science writer is a oenophile. This particular problem is true for any cultivated plant that is largely if not wholly reproduced asexually. Understand that most of the diverse varieties of wine grapes appeared as "sports", somatic mutants, that are then propagated asexually. So let's get the modern version of Louis Pasteur working on the grape no-sex problem because without a decent glass of wine with dinner, nothing else really matters, nothing civilized any ways.

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