Blog Post #8

All throughout are group's experiment with the Story of the Seed project our plant has acquired a lot of species of the Brassica oleracea since the last blog post. The plants have grown so much over the course of this project and starts to change and variate everyday. I think the plants have exhibited the most change and can be from 6cm to 17cm long, and not only that they have exhibited change and variation their color and size. Most of the leaves happen to be very sharp and scraggly and others are round. The leaves are very moist and have great color differentiation going from light green to dark green. The stems on the plants grew at an enormous rate since the last time we looked at them. But we could not get measurements on the plants due to thickness of the plants, but you can tell by looking at them they grew significantly. The collard plant we had, had a good sized diameter but was very stalky. Like the collard's the cabbage was very stalky, but for different reason to hold the weight of it. The kale was the tallest of the three and a very long skinny stem because it is a very lightweight plant. With both of the main focuses there were many differences in the stem and leaves.


Most of the different types of brassica are normally eaten by humans, artificial selection can be used to create specific phenotypes for Brassica. They can use this to make a bigger trait for the plant. Descent with modification comes from animals needing to adapt to a habitat. Selective breeding is pretty much the same thing but is created naturally and better suits plants. All of these traits are phenotypes. The phenotypes are coded in DNA by genes in their chromosomes. Phenotypes are obtained in a lot of ways. Examples, selective breeding, artificial selection, descent with modification, mutations, and adaptations. mutations don't sound good they sound harmful, but there actually very interesting. While all mutations happen to change the phenotype some do nothing but others do harm. Adaptations and descent with modification are connected in a certain way. Descent with modification is when an animal adapts and survives the natural selection and then is able to reproduce that organism or it can happen if either of the parents have a new trait.

One of the things plants have most in common is their colors. all of the plants are green. I don't believe plants have always been green since the beginning of their ancestors. The reason for that being the world has changed so the plants had to change and adapted. When the earth changes almost everything else has to change with it and adapt. While technology continues to advance and progress more and more greenhouse gases will continued to be used, which will change habitats and increase temperatures. Once Brassica had and was able to adapt to the new world they reproduced creating descent with modification and didn't die off of natural selection.


Farmers and breeders always wan to sell the biggest best plants. Of course all farmers want their plants to be appealing to get higher prices. Farmers don't usually get to choose where they farm, although we have plant modification they can grow corn even in a drought or "dry spot." Very popular spots to bugs are grapes in the dry areas or soy beans. To make these plants appealing and perfect plant breeding is very effective but even more so, genetically modifying them. To make the seed and get the best trait they want, they take a gene from the plants seed and put a copy to it, in the DNA of plant cells. After that the farmer grows the plant and lets it mature until its ready to produce seeds for the farmer. Finally, the government inspects the seeds and approves them and then they can be sold on the market.