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Old and new plants from the Americas to Europe: potatoes, corn and the genetics of double hybrid corn (1800–1940)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Bruno Esperante ,
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto  and
Miguel Cabo
Bruno Esperante*
Affiliation:
Grupo Histagra – Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto
Affiliation:
Grupo Histagra – Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
Miguel Cabo
Affiliation:
Grupo Histagra – Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

We discuss the extension of corn and potatoes in Galician Atlantic agriculture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an innovation process that facilitated rapid circulation of a new cattle feed from the Americas to Europe. Specifically, we focus on Galicia from 1890 to 1940, a time of significant scientific interest with regard to genetic improvements. This new science made it possible to develop double hybrid corn plants that became widespread after the 1920s. In this article we will describe the conditions accompanying the introduction and spread of these American crops, as recorded by modernist historiography, then analyse the institutional and social framework – knowledge networks, innovation systems and institutional and social tools – that enabled genetic advances in the twentieth century. To accomplish this, we must trace the journey of seeds and knowledge across the Atlantic from places such as the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (1918) to the Galician Biological Mission (1921), among others.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , April 2020 , pp. 53 - 62
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

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2 An early published reference to corn can be found in the article by Manuel Murguía in the Boletín da Real Academia Galega (1907–09). In the journal Prácticas Modernas, he had addressed the question some years prior, and surprisingly assumed that corn was already being cultivated from the Middle Ages onwards in some European regions (without excluding the possibility that Galicia was among them). See M. Murgía, ‘¿Cuándo se generalizó el cultivo del maíz en Galicia?’, Prácticas Modernas, 63 (1st August 1905) and 64 (15th August 1905). Years later, Fermín Bouza Brey returned to the topic in 1953, but made no innovative contribution.

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35 Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciencia, p. 428.

36 Ibid.

37 Cabo Villaverde, ‘O labor da Misión Biolóxica de Pontevedra ata 1936 e a reforma da agricultura galega en Cruz Gallástegui Unamuno’, 114.

38 Ibid., 114–15.

39 Ibid, 121.

40 Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciencia, p. 431.

41 Cabo Villaverde, ‘O labor da Misión Biolóxica de Pontevedra ata 1936 e a reforma da agricultura galega en Cruz Gallástegui Unamuno’, 146.

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44 Ibid., 126.

45 Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciência, p. 434.

46 Ibid.

47 Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciência, p. 435.

48 Fernández Prieto, El apagón tecnológico del franquismo, pp. 291–2.

49 Ibid., p. 226.

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